23 Trial Lawyer • Spring 2022 along. It’s also a good idea to know how your gear works, which side of the paddle is the front, how to unclip your board leash and what kind of personal flotation device suits you. Every summer Tuesday I share the water with a stand up paddle yoga class. Talk about balance! And how great for those micro muscles in your back, core and knees, the stabilizers that are so neglected while staring at the screen or doing a zoom deposition. I’ve not done a depo on my board, and I don’t aspire to. The stoke is fragile and ephemeral like the ripples curving off the blade of your paddle. Don’t jinx it. If approached properly, with respect, commitment and focus, paddling leaves no room on the water for law practice. Don’t invite it in. Mind the water One Oregon greatness is there are kazillions of miles of river and a bazillion acres of flat water to explore. And the ocean. When starting out, flat water is best. All those reservoirs behind Corps of Engineers dams are available for paddling. Lakes abound and almost all have launching sites for watercraft. Usually the water is a little warmer than a river, and it is so fun to see the topography from the water instead of a hiking trail. My wife, Lynette Williams, and I paddled Blue River Reservoir the day before the Holiday Farm Fire blew up. It was magical and feels even more so now that so much has burned. It will be magical again. We just need to take the longboard long view. Two things to watch out for on lakes are power boats and wind. I avoid flatwater that is really popular with power boats. The wakes can be unsettling and can even knock you off your board. And the noise kinda distracts from the vibe that I am going for on my board. Wind can sneak up on you. It feels so great to be running with the wind at your back, until you turn around to go home. If you start out in the afternoon and head into the wind, then you get to be blown back to the launch site at the end of the paddle rather than digging with all your might. One summer day on Waldo Lake the wind kicked up white caps. I was happy that all I had to do was sit down on my board and ride it in, just using my paddle like a rudder. Waldo is fabulous with no motorboats allowed. The silence of the wilderness area allows you to hear the dip and the drip of your paddle in that shimmering, clear water. The Willamette River has lots of flat water to explore all the way from Eugene to the Columbia. It’s a big river with plenty of space to accommodate lots of users. One community that takes over the Willamette in Portland every year is a huge coven of Halloween witches. A smaller group has now formed at Alton Baker Park in Eugene. With costumes, makeup and paddleboard dances, they cast quite a spell. For some reason all of the crows in the neighborhood join in, aerially adding to the enchantment. The witches are welcoming to warlocks as long as the warlocks paddle with the right spirit. The ocean is so different from lakes and rivers. There are days when it is super calm and welcoming. But, even on those days, the gentle swell of the tides can challenge a beginner. And if it kicks up, just getting a big board past the break is daunting. If you want some salt, the best place to start is in a harbor or marina. Find a swanky one like Marina del Rey beach in California, and you can paddle around and admire some of the coolest yachts and pleasure boats in the world, all from the comfort of your tiny sliver of foam and fiberglass. Drift into the rhythm Look, paddling is just not that hard. You don’t need to move sideways, or jump, or sprint really fast, or evade an opponent who is trying to throw you off. You don’t need to worry about gaining too much speed and crashing into a tree. You don’t need to worry about landing on hard pavement and breaking your noggin. All you need to do is stand on your own two feet and swing your arms front to back. And if you can’t physically stand, then you just need to sit and use a shorter paddle. Accept that you might get wet — good, we all came from water and we are all made of water. Welcome home! And when you finally get competent, you will realize subtle but valuable physical changes — greater core strength, less pain in your low back, stronger, less achy knees. But the greatest change will be discovering the stoke of drifting into a rhythm of reach, catch, power, release and recover. Breathe through each phase, adopt a soft inward gaze, bring your hands to heart center and set an intention . . . Oh wait a minute. That’s for the next column, on yoga. See you on the water. Derek Johnson is a partner at Johnson Johnson Lucas and Middleton, PC. His practice focuses on personal injury, defective products, motor vehicle collisions and wrongful death. He contributes to OTLA Guardians at the Guardians Club Plus level. Johnson’s office is located at 975 Oak St. Ste. 1050, Eugene, OR 97401. He can be reached at djohnson@justicelawyers.com or 541-484-2434. At Halloween,Williams and Johnson join the paddleboarding witches at Eugene’s Alton Baker Park.
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