The sound of a paddle

The evening is closing in and we only have a few hundred meters left down to the tiny wharf, when she says it. We are about to finish a kayak trip down our local river Numedalslågen. Instead of eating supper at home, we had put a simple pasta salad in a bag, cycled down to the river on our bikes and paddled up to the little island we knew upstream. There were no mosquitoes out there on the island, and we could sit on the hot rocks and eat while we looked at the current drawing patterns on the water surface around the island.

Later, wild joyful shouts spread through the air above the river as the girls were playing in the swift current with their kayaks. Then we pointed our kayaks south and paddled towards home. It didn’t take long before we saw our first beaver.

And that’s when she says it, shortly after the evening’s first beaver encounter, while quietly drifting down the river:

– The sound of a paddle in the water, I think it’s the most beautiful sound I know.