Wholesome, non-industrially produced food is provided on the tours

Patuxent Riverkeeper has joined forces with several other Waterkeepers in the Chesapeake Bay region to offer a variety of paddle touring opportunities with a stress on environmental and food sustainability. A sustainable kayak tour is a journey on placid waters to explore the watershed and forge a closer connection to a natural lifestyle. Our tours explore the environment and human practices aimed both at improving health and reducing our own negative impact on the environment. A kayak allows you to see things at your own pace, experience nature firsthand and in an intimate way. You will also observe the various impacts human habitation has on the fragile ecosystem. On a sustainable kayak tour, you could see wildlife, sustainable construction and/or agricultural practices, and features aimed at improving our connection to nature. These tours help us to think about and discuss ways to live in balance with nature. Ironically, a sustainability tour also highlights at least a few things encountered along the way that are decidedly unsustainable too.

What is meant by sustainability?

The trips are great exercise and you are the master of your own craft

Sustainability in a broad sense is the relative balance between nature and civilization. It is the capacity for maintaining a system or a practice while protecting its integrity and viability. Attempts to strike that balance can be observed in food production, building construction practices, waste disposal techniques, stormwater management systems and a variety of other societal approaches to utilizing our natural resources for positive effects. Exploring sustainability in our environmental practices extends to the technology used to maintain our homes and the specific role we all play in helping to instill these environmentally sound practices into our everyday lives. Something can be said to be sustainable when it reflects ways to strike a balance between human habitation and nature, so that both are able to thrive without competing or harming one another. Adopting a sustainable lifestyle sometimes means swapping short term gain or profit for long term viability and public or social benefit. The notion of sustainability goes to the heart of the role of pollution and individual choice in our society.

What does this stuff have to do with Riverkeeping?

New spaces and special places

The Chesapeake Waterkeepers believe that raising awareness about our direct ties to nature and about ways we can improve our harmonious connections to the natural world will help individuals to make more sustainable and more appropriate choices.

Of course, Waterkeepers believe in advocacy first and foremost. Offering sustainability tours does not alter our commitment to advocating for change and improvements to water quality. We want to do more than just educate and raise awareness, we also seek to bring about constructive action and social change. The tours do not replace the importance and necessity of individual and collective action to work on the problems that face the waterways. However, providing public information about sustainable living raises awareness, creates change at the individual level, builds and empowers the pro-environmental community and raises funds for our advocacy endeavors.

What is included with a Chesapeake Water keeper sustainability tour?

The tours come with experienced guide(s); a rental kayak, paddling and safety equipment, snacks and/or a featured meal, literature, brochures or other information about sustainable practices, ideas, concepts and products.