news-record.com

REIDSVILLE — Carole Balsley of Reidsville has multiple sclerosis. Three years ago, at age 53, she never dreamed she’d be able to take up any sport, much less kayaking. But a friend bolstered her confidence, starting her out in a safe, shallow farm pond.

Since giving it a try, she’s been hooked. Now, she’s paddling rivers once a week.

“If I can do it, anyone can do it,” she says.

Betty Jenewein of Asheboro is married to an avid paddler, but she’d been reluctant to join him on the water.

“It’s kind of like learning to drive,” she says. “It’s better if someone outside the family teaches you.”

Someone did. Now, she’s an avid paddler and nothing keeps her off the water — not even snakes and alligators, and she’s contended with both.

Rebecca Taylor, the pastor at Speedwell Presbyterian Church near Reidsville, is usually game to try most anything once. So she jumped at the invitation to borrow a kayak and try paddling. She just didn’t expect for it to turn into a passion.

All three say they started paddling because of one person — Lynda Purcell.

Purcell is on a mission. Her goal? “A kayak under every butt,” she says.

Balsley says she can count at least 50 people Purcell has lured to the river in the past three years.

For Purcell, 63, it’s about sharing the joy she experiences every time she launches “Lighthouse,” the name she’s given her sit-atop kayak. Of the five she owns, it’s her favorite.

The others have names, too. It’s just one of those little eccentricities that defines Purcell. She names — or re-names — everything: boats, friends, even snakes that slither through her garden.

So it’s no wonder that Purcell, who lives on a stretch of land outside Reidsville, felt compelled to come up with a name for the group of folks who regularly paddle together. She dubbed them the Silverfish Paddlers, largely because many of them are over 50. But recently, it’s become a more diverse group, ranging in age from 14 to 76.

A 14-year-old member, Jessica Carter, designed their logo — a fanciful fish in a kayak with bright red lips. Some say it could be a caricature of Purcell, who, despite her outdoorsman-like ruggedness, never paddles without her lipstick on.

Members of the Silverfish include veteran paddlers, people in Purcell’s prayer group, and those who work with her one day a week at Greensboro Auto Auction. Anyone she can harangue into a boat.

She’s pretty confident that once they make that first trip, slip into the wonderful rhythm of slicing a paddle through the water, gliding along with the current, taking in the riverbank beauty and wildlife, they’ll want to do it again and again.

That’s what happened to her in the mid-1970s. She grew up in Eden but never gave a lot of thought to the two rivers that ran through her town.

“My mother’s idea of roughing it was the second floor of the Holiday Inn,” she says.

But college, a stint as a social worker in California, and later, a yearlong solo trek across Europe, left her primed for adventure.

She got one in 1973 when a fellow social worker in Greensboro invited her on her first paddle.

They were headed down the New River in the North Carolina mountains when it started to rain. “Then it hailed,” Purcell says. They managed to pull their canoe under a willow tree. That’s when the lightning started. Then a snake dropped from the tree, landing in the boat.

When they were finally out of the water, her friend said, “If you still have a desire to paddle, then you’re hooked.”

Purcell was.

And she’s out to hook others.

The Silverfish Paddlers is one means. It’s a loose organization with no meetings and no officers. Purcell says she’s merely the trip coordinator. Balsley calls her “the big fish.”

Purcell keeps a ListServ of more than 30 names and dispatches information about several paddles each week. The Silverfish group recently joined forces with the Dan River Basin Association and Three Rivers Outfitters to organize the Silverfish for the Rivers, a benefit paddle along the Smith and Dan rivers in Eden.

In addition to paddling local rivers, Purcell has led trips to the North Carolina coast and to Florida, where they traveled down the river with manatees.

Hardly a paddle goes by that Purcell doesn’t sweet talk a heron into flying along with the group.

“I make friends with all animals,” she says.

But people are her specialty.

And she’s very convincing when she lures them to the river.

“It’s cheap. It’s fun,” she says. She woos them with talk of the beauty they’ll see, the friends they’ll make and the great exercise.

And then, she cinches the deal.

“You know that flesh that sometimes hangs down from the upper arm?” she asks slyly. “Paddlers don’t have it.”

That usually does it.

Another convert.

And Purcell is a little closer to her goal. 

Contact Myla Barnhardt at 627-1781, ext. 116, or myla.barnhardt@news-record.com.