A Favorite Read: Water Borne, by Dan Rubinstein

In the past decade or so, stand-up paddle boarding — SUP for short — has become a popular recreational pastime for thousands of people around the world. The sport involves standing up on a fat, thick surfboard and propelling yourself through the water using a long single-bladed paddle. 

SUP practitioners say it’s relaxing, a great workout, and a lot of fun. Canoeists and kayakers who haven’t tried it sometimes think of it in the same way that tennis players think of pickleball: as a quaint, inferior version of the “real” sport. I was one of them until, on a canoe trip on the Colorado River, I watched a party of paddleboarders navigate a raging, boiling rapid that my partner and I were too chicken to run in our boat. The leader cruised through the seething cauldron while standing up. Her skill was jaw-dropping and obliterated my misguided opinion that paddleboarding is for softies.    

Any remaining SUP skeptics might do well to read Water Borne (on Amazon and Bookshop) by Dan Rubinstein, a journalist, editor, and adventurer based in Ottawa, Ontario. Over the course of 10 weeks, Rubinstein paddled an SUP from Ottawa to Montreal to New York via Lake Champlain and the Hudson River, west to Buffalo via the Erie Canal, then to Toronto, the north shore of Lake Ontario, and back to Ottawa via the historic Rideau Canal. 

Though Rubinstein’s 1,200-mile voyage was an athletic feat in which he sometimes covered an astonishing 40 miles a day in withering heat, epic battles with waves and adverse weather form only a small part of Water Borne’s narrative. Most of the book is a travelogue enlivened by portrayals of the places Rubinstein passed through and the countless Americans and Canadians who generously shared what living in their part of the world and, especially, near water, means to them. That’s because the point of the trip was journalistic: Rubinstein wanted to explore the concept of “blue space” — essentially, proximity to water — and how it affects people mentally, emotionally, and physically. 

Readers won’t be surprised to learn that water’s effect on the human psyche is overwhelmingly positive. After all — apart from the simple fact that water is essential to life — we love to swim in it, live in cottages or homes beside lakes and rivers, or hang out at the beach or stroll along an oceanside boardwalk. 

But, as we follow his journey, Rubinstein goes beyond the obvious and intuitive to cite several academic studies that measure what happens physiologically to our bodies when we’re near water. In one study conducted in West Palm Beach, Florida, for example, a section of waterfront was enhanced with tables, chairs, shade plants, and “fascination frames” through which people could contemplate the activity in the harbor. The study participants were asked to hang out there, and in another waterfront section that lacked those amenities. 

“Using a mood scale to capture subjective well-being plus smartwatches to track heart rate variability,” Rubinstein writes, “the research team found that stress reduction was markedly higher in the enhanced space.” The upshot of this and the numerous other studies Rubinstein refers to is that proximity to water is good for us, mentally, physically, and spiritually, and that even small exposures to blue space via mini-parks or waterfront walkways and benches — dubbed “aquapuncture” by some researchers — can have tangible salutary effects on wellness. 

Rubinstein is an engaging narrator and curious journalist who constantly spoke with people along the way, from cottagers and boaters to tugboat captains and environmental activists. Some were random encounters, others prearranged interviews, but all of them helped Rubinstein paint a picture of the places he was visiting and how, in some cases, their inhabitants’ situation near water had far-reaching ramifications. 

Case in point: In the 1960s, the legendary folk singer Pete Seeger lived in a cabin in the Hudson Valley, and when he saw how companies large and small were dumping all sorts of toxic waste and killing fish and other wildlife in the river he loved, he and his wife raised $100,000 to buy a 106-foot sloop, the Clearwater. The couple used it to travel to communities up and down the river and sing songs celebrating the natural world and rally support for various anti-pollution protests and the Clean Water Act. 

Seeger’s work ignited grassroots efforts to clean up the Hudson that continue today. The Clearwater and a smaller sister vessel called the Woody Guthrie still serve as floating environmental classrooms. Rubinstein had a chance to ride on the latter and learn about Seeger’s environmental muckraking. Its captain told him that if not for the work of the late musician and his acolytes, “[The Hudson] would be a dead river. It’d be full of shit.”  

Throughout his journey and on both sides of the international border, Rubinstein comes across similar examples of everyday citizens who are mobilizing others to restore blighted shorelines, clean up contaminated rivers and streams, and open up more blue space to enrich their communities. It’s a hopeful phenomenon that can demonstrably pay off. “What works in Kahnawake may not fly in Newburgh or Manhattan,” he writes, “but in bang-for-our-buck accounting, well-executed aquatic interventions are hard to beat.”