My Watermark is the Whitemud Creek, Alberta.

We were with a friend paddling on the Whitemud Creek through Edmonton. This creek, we're only able to paddle on in the very early spring during the snow melt and only if there was enough snow on the ground to actually create enough water to paddle in. And even then there are beaver dams and fallen trees and twists and turns and getting up and getting out of the boat, dragging the boat around and across, or however you can get it across, getting back in and going again. We didn't quite realize it was going to be as rough as it was, but it was a lot of fun in retrospect. One of those things that you're glad you did after it's done.

We had a friend with us, and our friend had a longer boat, and a longer boat on twisty rivers are tough: they can easier tip, especially when there's a current and if they're broadside to the water. She did hit a log and spun sideways and flipped. This was very early spring, there was still snow on the bank, but she was ok, got out of the boat we caught the boat and dragged to shore. She was soaked, but it was a pretty nice day, and we were all hopped up on the adrenaline from having this happen. We were kings and queens of the world, we high-fived each other, took some pictures, laughed, and set up the boats again.

And then she said, "where's my paddle"? We said what do you mean, didn't you hold on to your paddle. She let it go when she flipped, I think most human beings would have more concern for themselves than their paddle when they flip. So we were up the creek with no paddle, probably 7 or 8 kilometres from the end. We had 3 boats and 2 paddles; no one had a spare paddle. Remember, the river was flowing quite fast, so there was no option to go without a paddle, we couldn't tow something like that.

Luckily for us were paddling the White Line, we were not in the middle of nowhere, we were actually in the middle of Edmonton. We got out of our boats, we hooked the boats to our waist, and we dragged the boats through the woods all the way up the Whitemud Ravine until we hit some kind of residential area in the middle of Edmonton. It being 2014 when this happened, someone had an iPhone, we called a taxi – we had to look at the street numbers to figure out where we were – the taxi came to pick us up, one person stayed with the boats, and the other got in the taxi to get the car. It was the most unusual end to the our paddling trip, we've never quite had a paddling trip like that before, we've never taken a taxi back to our car on a paddling trip before. But how fortunate we were to not have been in the middle of nowhere.

Since then, whenever we go down into the Whitemud Ravine and the North Saskatchewan River, as that's what the Whitemud connects to, we look for the paddle, and this paddle has become a little bit of a legend as we wonder what happened to the paddle. Did it flow into the North Saskatchewan, from there did it get into Lake Winnipeg, from there is it now in Hudson's Bay, did some lucky northern kayaker pick it up, is it stuck in the Whitemud Ravine somewhere, will we find it some day, will archaeologists 2,000 years from now find the paddle and make some kind hypothesis about how it got there? We don't know what happened to the paddle.

This was a connection between my friend and my self. Like any experience where the unexpected happens and you have to solve a problem in an unconventional way, this was an experience for us. We are not people who grew up beside rivers, so even the very act of daring to get on one with a boat and a paddle, is an amazing thing for me and my friend when we think about it afterwards.

You have no choice but to go where the river goes when you're paddling. As humans, we always think we're in control of these things; not only are you at the mercy of the river, but you go where the river tells you to go. It's a different experience. A moving body of water is a different creature from a still body of water, isn't it. I think that's one of the reason you don't control it, it controls you.