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 Join us Wednesday, Oct 14, for the HCC General Meeting to hear from Marilyn Kircus about the what it is like to be a vagabond volunteer at parks across the country.
Marilyn fell in love with paddling when she took a canoe class in college. But another several years went by before she got her first canoe, a lake keeled Grumman aluminum 17-foot canoe, with a lateen sailing rig, which held her family of five. None of her family was interested in canoeing, so she became a solo paddler. Soon after that she bought a white-water canoe and played a lot in the rivers of Arkansas.
Marilyn joined the Houston Canoe Club soon after she relocated to Houston. Soon she was buying more canoes, and eventually had a little solo flat-water canoe, a tandem canoe, a whitewater kayak, and a sea kayak. She was a founding member of the Houston Area Sea Kayakers. She loves all kinds of paddling, put especially loves paddling in swamps and little creeks. She has been leading canoe trips for thirty plus years for the Sierra Club, the Ozark Society, Houston Canoe Club, and Houston Area Sea Kayakers. She has been an ACA trainer. She loves the Boundary Waters and has spent several weeks there, including an eight-day solo trip. She paddled a lot of Natalie Wiest’s exploratory trips on which Natalie’s book is based.
Almost ten years ago, after retiring from Houston Independent School District, Marilyn started her best (so far) life as a Vagabond Volunteer. She works at National Wildlife Refuges across the country in return for housing and utilities. She has had both work and play adventures and made new friends through paddling. She lost both her job and housing, due to the pandemic, last March, about a year after she lost her canoe and trailer along with her bike and car. Plus, some mobility, in a rear end wreck. But she is dreaming of getting to do more paddling and volunteering.
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