In the summer of 2015, Traci Lynn Martin’s mom was in the final weeks of a battle with cancer. A hospice bed was set up in her mom’s living room in Kansas City. Traci would sit by her side and talk as they looked out the window. After her mom died, Traci knew she couldn’t keep putting off her dream: becoming the first person to kayak around the Great Lakes in one year. So she set out to do just that, on an expedition to circumnavigate all of the Great Lakes in one year by kayak.
In her hospital bedroom, Traci asked her mom about everything — her childhood, her memories, her wishes. And during one of those conversations, her mom surprised her. “She said, ‘You know, I really regret not ever learning how to swim, and I really regret that I never learned how to play the piano.’ And she pointed to the piano, and she said, ‘You know, if you have anything you want to do, Traci, do it. Don’t wait, because you don’t know how much time you have.’”
She always knew she wanted to do something bigger — she just didn’t know when. After her mom died, she knew it had to be now. She was 47, and she had rheumatoid arthritis, but realized there was something she wanted to do: circumnavigate all of the Great Lakes in one year by kayak. No one had ever done it before. This was it: a chance at total freedom and release on the water — with only herself, her body and her boat to rely on. Traci just had to figure out how to make it happen.
She was no stranger to paddling. Traci bought her first kayak in her 30s and was hooked. A decade later, she was racing, paddling the Missouri River 340 — 340 miles across the whole state of Missouri— nine times. “You just paddle day and night,” she says. “You don’t stop, you don’t rest. If you’re wanting to win, you stay in your boat. You just, you eat in your boat, you pee in your boat, you just stay in your boat. You just go day and night.”
Then she solicited donations for her big Great Lakes trip….
While the attempt on the Great Lakes did pan out exactly as planned , Traci did set another record in 2021 by becoming the fastest woman to solo paddle the Mississippi River.
Now you can listen to her tale on the Points North podcast by Dan Wanschura, a podcast about the land, water and inhabitants of the Great Lakes.
Listen Here: