Finding Serenity On Water Spokane Man Gets In Touch With Nature In His Canoe

With his green canoe strapped to the top of his rusty red van, 64-year-old Chuck Fisk heads for water whenever he can to enjoy paddling during these autumn days.

“With days in the late fall that are crisp and beautiful, there’s a special tang in the air,” said Fisk after a day in his canoe on Long Lake. “It’s that sort of late-fall smell of whatever it is. Crispy leaves, maybe.”

A number of people are loading up canoes these days and heading toward water. Some do it for the high-intensity rush they get when they go crashing down the rapids and others do it for the exercise, whether it’s paddling across a lake, upstream, or just carrying the craft to the water.

Fisk, a retired school teacher who is a member of the Spokane Canoe and Kayak Club, paddles for the sheer enjoyment of being in nature.

“You can get the beauty of the first snowfall on the peaks and it’s a little different touch from just the greenery of summer,” he said. “Then there’s the glorious golds, browns and occasional reds in the leaves. The colors are so crisp this time of year.”

Fisk is also an active member of the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society, where he uses his canoe as a means to see the sights and watch birds.

When he was 6 years old, Fisk moved from Illinois to New Hampshire, where he discovered paddling. As a Boy Scout, he learned to paddle on the Connecticut River. The experience hooked him to the sport.

“Boy Scouts has been my strong suit for 52 years now,” Fisk said proudly. “I’m mostly active with the Order of the Arrow, which is a scouting honor camping group. I mostly go out to troops, packs and units and tell them about early-day scouting, and it’s been pretty well received.”

Fisk has taken troops all over the world on paddling expeditions. He’s gone to world jamborees in Norway, Switzerland and Japan and has paddled troops across the Boundary Waters in Minnesota for a decade. He’s also made 32 trips into the Grand Canyon and rafted the Colorado River through it seven times.

In 1963, he moved to California and became a math and science teacher.

“After three years in the public school system, I was asked if I wanted to join a little private school at Lake Tahoe, get rich and go skiing for the rest of my life. But things just didn’t quite work out that way,” said Fisk. “The school didn’t make me rich, but I did get to do a lot of paddling on Lake Tahoe.”

Fisk moved to Spokane six years ago after being invited to become an executive with the Inland Northwest Boy Scout Council. Since then, he has been exploring the waters of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho.

“We’re blessed with such a tremendous wealth of lakes here in this vicinity,” he said. “There are so many beautiful places, but I notice not very many people go to see them.”

Fisk and other members of the Spokane Canoe and Kayak Club have taken the organization from just a group that paddles together to a group that is involved in the community.

“I think one of the things I’m the happiest about is that we’ve moved from an almost purely recreational club to a club with broader concerns,” said Fisk. “We’ve become a lot more interested in conservation measures. Particularly problems of access and problems of cleanups.”

Some members, working with the Spokane Parks and Recreation Department, are instructing people on how to canoe. The parks department holds sessions for anyone interested in canoeing on the Little Spokane River.

“We get lots of people interested in these programs,” said Mike Oho, outdoor recreational coordinator for the parks department. “Most people tell me this is something they’ve always wanted to do and are glad they finally did it.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: COMING UP The Spokane Parks Department’s next scheduled canoe trip down the Little Spokane River will be the annual Winter Float, Feb. 8, 1998. Info: 625-6200.