A few days ago, I point­ed my kayak into a gust­ing north wind kick­ing up a lot of chop. I can’t put a dol­lar sign on what the effort was worth to me, which makes me won­der how mon­e­tary val­ues are assigned to things with no quan­tifi­able or prac­ti­cal value.

A cou­ple of kilo­me­ters of hard, non-stop pad­dling brought me to a shel­tered area at the head of the lake, and a quin­tes­sen­tial “cot­tage coun­try” tableau. A father and his two sons were drift­ing slow­ly in match­ing canoes, cast­ing lines into the water lap­ping against the sheer face of the gran­ite shoreline.

The lake is home to trout so big one of them can be a meal for four. How­ev­er, they lurk, elu­sive,  in the deep, dark depths.
The more like­ly catch for the trio were small, ined­i­ble rock bass.
But that was of no consequence.
What mat­tered was the qui­et, unhur­ried doing of it: cast, reel in, and do it again. Over and over. Incred­i­bly (won­der­ful­ly to my mind), the two young­sters weren’t inter­est­ed in amass­ing that most ubiq­ui­tous form of mod­ern mem­o­ra­bil­ia, selfies.
Com­pare that to the anony­mous mem­o­ra­bil­ia  col­lec­tor who laid out a record $24-mil­lion dol­lars for an old shirt.
Okay, it was the one Babe Ruth wore when he (myth­i­cal­ly) “called” the home run that won the New York Yan­kees the 1932 World Series.
Even so, it’s still just an old shirt.
Cal­cu­lat­ing the ratio between price and val­ue is sub­jec­tive. But what makes being able to claim some­thing pure­ly for your own pri­vate enjoy­ment worth enough mon­ey to fund, by way of com­par­i­son, the edu­ca­tion sys­tem of an under­de­vel­oped country?

                         PRICELESS

The boys in the canoes were stay­ing at a near­by  cot­tage for one week, col­lect­ing mem­o­ries that I know from sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences at their age, will change in scope and details over the years, but nev­er waver in the way and depth they are treasured.
When the boy on his own drift­ed too close to the rocks, his father told him to “just pad­dle back­wards”, both sav­ing the bow of the canoe, and impart­ing a bit of Cana­di­an lore.
Designed to go for­ward and back­ward with equal ease, light enough to be portaged, and in the orig­i­nal birch­bark hull days, eas­i­ly repaired using handy and omnipresent mate­r­i­al, the canoe made it pos­si­ble for Euro­pean set­tlers to explore and open up  — or exploit and col­o­nize, depend­ing on your point of view — the vast Cana­di­an wilderness.
It was, and remains,  the per­fect vehi­cle for a coun­try of uncount­ed rivers and more than two mil­lion lakes that hold 20 per­cent of the world’s fresh water.
The price of learn­ing to pad­dle even the newest  high-tech ver­sions com­pe­tent­ly in all con­di­tions is sore knees, aching shoul­ders and dedication.
The rewards, canoeists will tell you, can bor­der on the sublime.

                     TOO PRICEY?

I won­der how some­one assessed that a pod­cast in which the Kelce broth­ers, one a for­mer the oth­er still active pro foot­ball play­ers, sit around and dis­cuss, among oth­er things, a vis­it to  the White House, sports and, believe it or not,  aliens, is worth $100-mil­lion over three years.
I’m will­ing to bet the three kids I came upon lat­er, fish­ing from a boat below the sec­ond high­est  rock­face on our 40 km long shore­line, went home with sto­ries as enter­tain­ing as any the hulk­ing for­mer ath­letes have to tell.

One of them was wear­ing a polar bear suit, which was a lot more fun than the mas­sive amount of facial hair the two pod­cast­ers have cho­sen as a costume.
I grant that my inter­pre­ta­tion of “the best things in life are free” cer­tain­ly doesn’t apply to every­one, nor should it.
In econ­o­mists’ terms, the val­ue of some­thing is how much some­one is will­ing to pay for it.
But as the renowned Amer­i­can pub­lish­er Alfed A. Knopf Sr not­ed: “An econ­o­mist is a man who states the obvi­ous in terms of the incomprehensible.”
From that per­spec­tive, it could be argued that the price tags for “col­lectible” sports and movie mem­o­ra­bil­ia, and nine-fig­ure remu­ner­a­tion, for peo­ple with no exper­tise beyond play­ing a game well, to opine on any­thing and every­thing, are on an accept­able and fair lev­el, as opposed to some­where between absurd and obscene.

But the peo­ple who buy into that prob­a­bly nev­er pad­dled a canoe or a kayak, or took kids fishing.
If they did, I won­der which one they’d end up assign­ing the high­er value?

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