Faculty Spotlight: A 100-Mile Canoe Trip Taught Bill Sistare the Value of Nature

 

The woods, trails and waterways have always felt like home to Bill Sistare. He spent his childhood in the Berkshires, paddling on the lakes, rivers and ponds near his home. As an adult he went on extensive canoe trips in Quebec and Ontario, sometimes spending 20 days in the wild.

So canoeing solo on a portion of the 100-mile Northern Forest Canoe Trail — akin to the Appalachian Trail for paddlers — was right up his alley.

Much of the vast 740-mile trail requires crossing large lakes, paddling upstream and portaging for miles, hours from civilization. Sistare’s trip began at the start of the trail in Old Forge, N.Y. From there, he paddled about 10 miles a day, staying at campsites along the way, before arriving at his destination on Saranac Lake.

Between navigable waters, he had to portage the canoe, which weighed 120 pounds with all his gear, food and his mini goldendoodle, Bryn, inside, either by hoisting it overhead or pulling it on a set of wheels.

While the trip was physically challenging, the experience was also a meditative exercise that allowed Sistare time to reflect on his relationship with the natural world.

“There is something very rhythmic about paddling,” he says. “For instance, the sound of the paddle dipping into the water, the pressure of the water on your paddle, and subtle little changes that you make with your hands when you’re paddling. You’re constantly paying attention to your paddle strokes to be efficient. When you are paddling 5,000 strokes a day, it is something you must be mindful of,” he says.

After a long day on the water, setting up camp alone after six hours of paddling might seem like a chore, but it can be a pleasure, providing time to soak in more sights, sounds and solitude. Before he left on his trip, colleagues asked him why on earth would he want to sleep in the wilderness all by himself. 

He often responded by quoting George W. Sears, an early conservationist and a sports writer in the 1880s, who wrote: “We do not go to the green woods and crystal waters to rough it, we go to smooth it. We get it rough enough at home, in towns and cities.” 

“That’s kind of the way I feel. It’s just very relaxing and calming for me to be outdoors,” Sistare says. Nature is his preferred environment for socializing, whether it is around a fire pit on campus or in tents, on trails or in clusters of canoes, where conversations always seem livelier and more spirited. Just being alone in nature can help you understand your place in the universe.

That authentic experience of being fully immersed in nature, of understanding that we are part of a vast ecosystem of the earth, is an especially important lesson for young people, he believes.

“I want the same experiences I have in nature for my students and my own children who are now adults. To be outdoors, whether alone or in the company of others, allows one to fully understand our place on earth and our connectedness to the living and non-living in this big ‘home’ where we find ourselves. I believe this to be a very important element of the adolescent experience, both here at Westminster and beyond,” he explains. 

Spending time outdoors also instills in young adults self-reliance, teamwork, persistence, confidence and a better appreciation for how humans depend on each other. It can be a healing experience, too. 

In the classroom, Sistare sometimes tells stories about his own challenges of being in the wilderness in order to relate to what his students might be facing. “Just to let them know that if they keep working through it, they will get where they need to be. Adversity is a great teacher; it accelerates your learning experience,” he says.

After he completed the trip, Sistare embarked on a very different journey. Diving into his family’s genealogy, he discovered that his love of water just might be in his blood. 

“I was fascinated by all the documents I could access, going two, three, four generations back into my family’s history,” he says. “On the census reports, you can find the cause of death; often diseases were the primary factor. In my own family, I discovered that we were seafarers.”

The first Sistare to arrive in America from Spain was a captain who was shipwrecked off the shores of New London and survived by swimming to shore. Another ancestor was an East Indies sea merchant who drowned; two others were New England whalers who also died at sea. 

“It opened my eyes to how closely related we all are to one another. The further you go back, the more you see how people have common ancestors. That relates a little bit to all the people I met on the canoe trip and how there are hidden levels of connection any time two strangers meet and have a conversation,” he says.

The sabbatical also gave Sistare an opportunity to learn how to play the banjo. While searching for online lessons, he came across neurologist Josh Turknett, who designed a neuroscience-based system of banjo instruction specifically for adult beginners. 

Turknett’s method assumes that learning to play music doesn’t necessarily take talent or aptitude, but rather structured, repetitive practice. The curriculum requires a student to play two or three measures at a time on repeat. It works like a brain exercise that enhances your neuroplasticity.

“When you learn in discrete entities like that, later when you sleep your brain is hardwiring it to become what is called subroutine,” Sistare explains. “Since I teach the neuroscience class, the experience of learning to play the banjo using this method is something I can talk about with my students with regard to how memory tasks are learned.

“For instance, I can tell them that memorizing vocabulary in Spanish is hard, and they will find it difficult. But the repetitive practice has its function; it gets your brain wired up, so you don’t even have to think about it. It becomes automatic.” 

Similarly, he notes that paddling requires repetitive, efficient movement, which becomes rote after a while. 

“You need to paddle in a straight line; otherwise you can fatigue yourself in a canoe that is rocking from side to side. So basically, you need to focus hard at first to practice your paddle strokes until you feel like it is efficient, like you’re not doing anything at all … even though you are pulling 20 to 30 pounds of force with each stroke.”

On his long paddling days, the Westminster community was often in the back of his mind. “There wasn’t a day that didn’t go by when I wasn’t carrying thoughts of my colleagues and students with me on the trail,” he says. He would think about specific people and how they might enjoy what he was experiencing at that moment, whether it was early morning mist rising off the lake, the wail of a loon in the evening, or the reeds swaying beneath him as he paddled over the crystal-clear water.

He feels deeply connected to many people in the Westminster community, because he’s been part of it for so long. “I have a sense of how sharing in a community works,” he says. “I carried the spirit of many people with me canoeing from day to day, different people on different days. Depending on what I would be experiencing, someone would pop into my head, and I’d think, ‘Ah, they’d like this.’”