Kayaking -- Free, Floating Escapes -- With Proper Timing, Seattle's Liquid Byways Provide Exchange Of Monotonous City Life For Beauty, Solitude Of Watery World

Life is too linear.

In the morning, we line up for a $3 cup of coffee. At noon, we stand in line for a sealed-in-plastic sandwich. In the evening, we join the slow conga line on the freeway. After dinner, we park ourselves at the computer and wait to get online.

How do we unwind? Maybe we bowl a few lines, strap on inline skates or line up for a permit to hike our favorite trail (single file, of course).

Sometimes, the best thing we can do for ourselves is: Get out of line.

Non-linear recreation is easy to find: We can play a round of golf, square-dance or chase balls across a diamond. I prefer to break ranks in a sea kayak, where the only lines that matter are the shoreline and the horizon.

Rules of navigation, shipping lanes and tide tables must be heeded, of course, but in a kayak, I can roam farther than a cell phone, or paddle backward in circles and no one will honk except a grouchy goose.

Why a kayak? What's wrong with a canoe, a rowboat or even a 30-foot runabout?

Personal preference. Canoes and rowboats sit on the water, a kayak rides in it - it puts you in touch, like hiking in moccasins. Bouncing along in a powerboat is about as intimate as slow-dancing in ski boots.

The point is, a kayak can provide all kinds of non-linear fun in the heart of Seattle - often within yards of those cars fuming across the bridge and those joggers who dare not stray from the "feet only" lane.

Some animals, including man, are nocturnal and some diurnal. The ones that hate crowds are crepuscular - most active at twilight and just before sunrise. They are the drivers on the freeway at 5 a.m., the hikers who head up the ridge for supper instead of lunch.

Here are some pockets of peace and perspective near downtown. Because solitude can be momentary, I recommend the practice of crepuscularity. Timing isn't everything, but it can heighten the memories. After all, how many of us would have gotten misty over "Lunch at Tiffany's" or imitated Rod Serling's introduction to "The Mid-morning Zone"?

First light

Union Bay/Arboretum: Paddle south from Magnuson Park and turn right at Webster Point into Union Bay. It's six to eight miles round-trip.

Or launch at the Sunnyside Avenue boat ramp on Lake Union and head east through Portage Bay and the Montlake Cut. It's five to seven miles round trip.

Don't wait until afternoon; Lake Washington will be cranky and confused by swarms of ski boats, floatplanes and personal watercraft. But at dawn, the lake is so calm and sleepy you can almost hear it yawn.

A special solitude lies hidden among the cattails and green-leather lily pads that fringe Laurelhurst and Husky Stadium. Frisbee-sized turtles haul themselves onto logs for a day of serious basking. An oily-looking but earnest muskrat cuts a slow V on his morning commute to the plant. Redwing blackbirds, swallows, coots and pre-delinquent goslings gossip and make rude comments about my intrusion. Less than a mile away, the molten thread of traffic on the 520 bridge has yet to congeal. Life in both worlds is pretty good.

Shilshole/Discovery Park: Launch at Golden Gardens in early morning to get a jump on the breeze and boat traffic south out of the Shilshole Marina; four to nine miles round trip.

With luck, you can ride an incoming tide south toward Discovery Park for a vivid lesson in "soft" geology.

Along Discovery Park's north beach, alders and madronas have fallen face first on the beach. Rounding West Point with its tidy lighthouse, you'll see the sandy shoulders above the park's south beach slump in resignation. The real show of force lies around the next bend - broken houses still sprawl below Magnolia Bluff, months after they slid to their deaths. A barrier of yellow tape makes it look all the more like a million-dollar crime scene.

Evening/night

Lake Washington Ship Canal to the Locks: Launch at Gas Works Park or the Sunnyside Avenue ramp and paddle west through the Ship Canal into Salmon Bay; six to seven miles round trip.

Even if you don't know who John Denver is, this outing will fill up your senses like a night on the water. Rope swings drop whooping teens into the Ship Canal. The smell of creosote mixes with the aroma of bread baking a few blocks away at Oroweat. The old tires that hang from the flanks of tugboats challenge a car nut's memory - ever had a set of Remingtons, Imperial Falcons or Hercules SuperRiders? Traffic noise gives way to the hammering, grinding and electric blue arc of drydock surgery.

Depending on your point of view, traffic is fascinating, not frustrating. As you pass beneath the Fremont Bridge, watch the undersides of cars as they thump across the gridwork above you.

Turn left into Fishermen's Terminal if you're hungry for a salmon burger - and athletic enough to climb from your boat onto a high dock while tourists in a restaurant look on.

Catch the sunset from a quiet cove to the left of the Locks, then head back into Lake Union for a front-row seat at the late show - a downtown skyline of gleaming knife edges, arches and backlit curves.

Paddling at night is sensuous. When sky and water become a single dark liquid and your stroke is smooth, it's like sliding across black-satin sheets. One night in the Arboretum, I watched a great blue heron poised like a dancer waiting for a cue as it hunted in the pink glow of a streetlight on the 520 bridge. Another night, my bow accidentally nudged a sleeping coot, which burst across the water like a berserk bathtub toy and nearly cost me my balance.

Kayaking in the city might not be as daring as the Bering Strait, but the water is deep enough and cold enough to make for a chilling experience. If you paddle at night, make sure you have a deck light. Kayak and marine-equipment stores sell a flashlight with a suction-cup base for $20 or so. A hiking headlamp isn't a bad idea, either. Without a light, you're just another hard-to-see piece of driftwood.

Stay out of the way of big boats (especially the ones that ignore the "no-wake" signs), wear a life jacket and, if you plan to pursue the sport, take a class.

Alki Beach/Alki Point: Launch at the western end of Alki Beach and either paddle around Alki Point toward the Fauntleroy ferry dock or back toward Duwamish Head; two to 10 miles round trip. Either way, you get a wider-screen view of the downtown skyline. From 50 yards offshore, the sidewalk surge of joggers, skaters, cyclists and walkers becomes a social essay, a commentary rather than just a sweaty commotion.

It's easy to find a dozen more private spaces close to downtown. The bottom line is, even an hour of kayaking will put a pleasant ripple in your day - and that's no line.

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Local rentals and classes:

-- Agua Verde Paddle Club 1303 N.E. Boat St. 206-545-8570 -- Folding Kayak Adventures 206-522-8249 -- Kayak Academy 206-527-1825 -- Kayak Pursuits 15143 N.E. 90th, Redmond 425-869-7067 -- Northwest Outdoor Center 2100 Westlake Ave. N. 206-281-9694 http://www.nwoc.com/classes -- Pacific Water Sports 16055 Pacific Hwy. S., SeaTac 206-246-9385 http://www.seattle2000.com/pacificwater/index.html -- Vashon Island Kayak Co. P.O. Box 908, Vashon 98070 206-463-9257 http://www.wolfenet.com/(tilde)vikayak

Other web sites with good general information: -- Eddyline Paddling Club http://user.aol.com/EddyPaddle/epcscrpt.htm -- Olympic Outdoor Center's "recommended reading" http://www.olympic.net/kayakOOC/reading.html -- Washington Kayak Club http://www.dlux.net/(tilde)wkc