“I’ve got it,” he had said. “It’s gotta be polyethylene.” The sun had been behind him then. He was holding a plastic oar like the kind you might see from a cheap inflatable raft—and wouldn’t that be appropriate now? “It can’t be wood,” he’d said. “That’s how all those islands got peopled in the first place. And you can forget about aluminum. No way would I want to be out there in the middle of an electrical storm with aluminum. What else but polyethylene? It’s relatively new. It’s modern. You know nobody’s done it before. Just imagine it, a man and a woman, together, in the primes of their lives—this is world record stuff; I’m talking Guinness—you and me alone out there, with the stars and all that—the moon would be huge—just me and my woman immersed in nature, fishing for sustenance, making saltwater potable, interacting with the dolphins, all while circumnavigating the globe in a fourteen-and-a-half foot polyethylene canoe."

Nature »  Environment  Planet Earth  Natural Disasters

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