The pull of wind and water
Kiteboarders get high on sport

Dave Ballard lives his life by the elements and his senses. The elements tell him when to farm his land in Mount Ulla and when to fly across the water.
He developed an appreciation for both the elements and his senses while growing up in the Lake Wylie area. On days when the lake was off-limits because of cold or other conditions, Ballard took to the backwoods on a four-wheeler. Ballard also spent his summers on the Mount Ulla land, a parcel running alongside N.C. 801 that his grandfather farmed.
Ballard watched the weather dictate what could and couldn’t be done until his intuition grew reliable enough to sense the direction of the wind and his senses grew sharp enough to observe the changing weather. Once a West Coast surfer, Ballard now farms that land in Mount Ulla daily with one eye trained to the wind, determining whether the elements are right for an afternoon on Lake Norman, where he can enjoy his new athletic passion, kiteboarding.
Pulse-pounding water sportsLake Wylie also shaped his penchant for water and adrenaline sports.
“I took to water skiing at an early age, and I have just been hooked on water ever since,” says Ballard, 47. “Water is a beautiful thing because you can get really extreme and then come down to a water landing rather than something like a hard earth.”
In his early adulthood, Ballard headed for Carolina Beach, where he made a living by surfing and opening surf shops. Eventually, he left North Carolina for the waves of the West Coast. But two decades after surfing captured his imagination, Ballard felt the need to return home.
“My family is getting older,” he says.
He settled into the family business, New Moon Farm, and began growing organic produce as part of a community-supported agriculture model. And while the water was still calling for him, as a grower, he couldn’t just leave his crops for a week to surf the Atlantic. It was then that Ballard took up kiteboarding.
“Lake Norman is so close. I can just work on my farm and, when the wind picks up, I can drive 15 minutes down the road and kiteboard. It keeps me sane and gives me my fix,” he says.
Big waves not requiredStill in its infancy as a sport, kiteboarding relies on a controllable power kite that pulls the harnessed rider across the water and into the air with a control bar and line as he stands on a small surfboard, wakeboard or kiteboard that has straps or bindings for the feet. The kiteboarder pilots the kite while steering the board, creating a unique challenge because the body is the only connection between the kite and the board. Kiteboarders, in essence, navigate the wind more than the water. When they are riding, they can use the kite to jump off the water – a foot or two at the beginning. Pros can hit 40 to 50 feet off the water.
In 2006, kiteboarders numbered between 150,000 and 200,000.
“It’s a really intense sport, but you don’t have to have big waves to have big fun,” he says. “You can catch 30 or 40 feet in the air without big water. You are getting pulled by a kite, the same way that a sailboat would work. You have to use the same principles as a sailor,” Ballard explains.
And as an organic farmer, Ballard also appreciates the low-impact nature of the sport.
“You don’t have to have all this stuff like with windsurfing. I can put all my equipment in the trunk of my car,” he says.
Safe spot on the lakeOn Lake Norman, Ballard often heads to Ramsey Creek Park with three fellow area kiteboarders. The point there provides ideal wind conditions, and there are safe launch locations.
Safety is of key concern in kiteboarding. More than 60 people have died in kiteboarding accidents in the past five years, with many of the fatalities resulting from an inexperienced boarder being lofted or dragged out of control, resulting in a collision. Even on Lake Norman, Ballard has witnessed unsafe situations that have influenced when and where he and his friends kitesurf.
“Lake Norman gets hugely populated in the summertime,” he says. “A lot of people have never seen kiting, and they want to get close to you to see what’s going on. And sometimes they think they are coming to see if I need help, and they put themselves in dangerous positions.”
For safety reasons, Ballard and his friends have a boat accompany them when they are on the more populated areas of the lake. It also helps that July and August, the lake’s busiest times, rarely offer ideal wind conditions for kiteboarding.
Although kiting may catch the eye of some of the boaters on Lake Norman as an interesting sport, Ballard and others caution against trying it alone.
“It’s still dangerous,” he warns. “There have been some major injuries. As far as I am concerned, you need to have lessons for this sport.”
Kiting is a sport that women can enjoy as much as men. The sport favors someone with finesse and an intuitive sense of the outdoors. It’s less expensive than some of the other water sports and has more compact gear. All of these elements have allowed kiting to sate Ballard’s desire to spend time on the water.
“Water and earth are beautiful elements to me,” he says, squinting from the sun as he looks out over the fields that yield a hundred different crops. Guinea fowl peck through the yard. A hint of a breeze begins, and he turns his head up, perhaps waging whether the breeze will turn into just a 12 mile per hour wind, enough to lead him to Lake Norman for the afternoon. The breeze stills, and Ballard finishes his thought.
“I plan on kiting until I am elderly.”
Lake Norman

Love One Another





Love one another, but make not a bond of love
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup, but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous,
but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone
though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping;
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together;
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow. 
--Kahil Gibran

Ride on the wind....forever

I Want To Ride On The Wind… Forever 

I Want To Ride Over Land and Sea
I Want To Ride on The Wind… Forever
… and I Want You Riding With Me…

I Want To Ride On The Wind Over Mountains
And Touch The Sky, So Blue
Then Raise Oceans, Like Sparkling Fountains
And Splash Through Water, Kissing You

I Want To Ride On The Wind… Hold Its Mane
Ride The Wind… Wild and Free
For The Wind – Will Never Be Tame…
So Hold On Tight and Just… Breathe…

… Ride The Wind – Let It Begin – Ride The Wind
Ride The Wind – Breathe It In – Ride The Wind
Ride The Wind – Blow Again – Ride The Wind
Ride The Wind – Raise The Wind – Ride The Wind!

I Want To Ride On The Wind – In The Moonlight
I Want To Ride On The Wind – In The Clouds
And Wave To The Wings of Eagles in Flight
… then Float like Snow – Dancing Down

I Want To Ride On The Wind Forever
I Want To Ride and Rush-Up Rainbow-Stairs
I Want To Ride On The Wind – Forever
For Your Sweet-Breath Beckons Me… Everywhere

… Ride The Wind – Let It Begin – Ride The Wind
Ride The Wind – Breathe It In – Ride The Wind
Ride The Wind – Blow Again – Ride The Wind
Ride The Wind – Raise The Wind – Ride The Wind!

MoonBee Canady

Badger Clark, Cowboy Poet

"To Her"...is my favorite Badger Clark poem because it is the kind of poetry Dave wrote for me.
I wonder, who will write poetry for me now?

The Free Wind

I went and worked in a drippin' mine
     'Mong the rock and the oozin' wood,
For the dark it seemed lit with a dollar sign
     And they told me money's good.
So I jumped and sweat for a flat-foot boss
     Till my pocket bulged with pay,
But my heart it fought like a led bronc hawse
     Till I flung my drill away.
For the wind, the wind, the good free wind,
     She sang from the pine divide
That the sky was blue and the young years few
     And the world was big and wide!
From the poor, bare hills all gashed with scars
     I rode till the range was crossed;
Then I watched the gold of the sunset bars
     And my camp-sparks glintin' toward the starts
And laughed at the pay I'd lost.
I went and walked in the city way
     Down a glitterin' canyon street,
For the thousand lights looked good and gay
     And they said life there was sweet.
So the wimmin laughed while night reeled by
     And the wine ran red and gold,
But their laugh was the starved wolf's huntin' cry
     And their eyes were hard and old.
And the wind, the wind, the clean free wind,
     She laughed through April rains:
"Come out and live by the wine I give
     In the smell of the greenin' plains!"
And I looked back once to the smoky towers
     Where my face had bleached so pale,
Them loped through the lash of drivin' showers
     To the uncut sod and the prairie flowers
And the old wide life o' the trail.
I went and camped in the valley trees
     Where the thick leaves whispered rest,
For love lived there 'mong the honey bees,
     And they told me love was best.
There the twilight lanes were cool and dim
     And the orchards pink with May,
Yet my eyes they'd lift to the valley's rim
     Where the desert reached away.
And the wind, the wind, the wild free wind,
     She called from the web love spun
To the unbought sand of the lone trail land
     And the sweet hot kiss o' the sun!
Oh, I looked back twice to the valley lass,
Then I set my spurs and sung,
For the sun sailed up above the pass
And the mornin' wind was in the grass
     And my hawse and me was young. 

To Her...

Cut loose a hundred rivers,
     Roaring across my trail,
Swift as the lightning quivers,
     Loud as a mountain gale.
I build me a boat of slivers;
     I weave me a sail of fur,
And ducks may founder and die
     But I
  Cross that river to her!

Bunch the deserts together,
     Hang three suns in the vault;
Scorch the lizards to leather,
     Strangle the springs with salt.
I fly with a buzzard feather,
     I dig me wells with a spur,
And snakes may famish and fry
     But I
Cross that desert to her!

Murder my sleep with revel;
     Make me ride through the bogs
Knee to knee with the devil,
     Just ahead of the dogs.
I harrow the Bad Lands level,
     I teach the tiger to purr,
For saints may wallow and lie
     But I
Go clean-hearted to her!
My husband died a month ago. He'd been sick for a long time and while his death was not surprising (cancer deaths rarely are), the speed with which the disease took him at the end was unexpected. He wasn't only my spouse, he was my best friend, my lover, teacher, mentor, right arm, strength, he was my everything.


Now I am in the throes of grief. It is like an unseen animal that is constantly gnawing away at me. I don't want to feel like this, I want my best friend back. I want to see him sitting in his favorite chair, playing his acoustic and working out the lyrics to a new song. I want to smell the heat of his skin and I want to touch him all over. I want to roll over in our bed at night and just listen the rhythm of his breathing. I want to talk to him, to tell him about what I read about Earth Day, about the new pictures of the grandkids, how the new garden looked after the recent rains, how much I love him.


I want to make him a favorite meal and watch him savor every bite. I want to hear his voice, tell him he needs to comb his hair, hear him say that he loves me one more time. I want to feel safe, content and loved again. I don't want to feel the way I feel now.


I have never been a weak person but now I feel completely helpless. Nothing in my life seems to matter to me right now and I know that if he saw me in this shape, he would give me down the road for feeling so sorry for myself.  "I'm dead!", he would say, "Get off your ass and do something positive. All this negative energy is no good for anybody!  I loved you so much and this is what you are doing with that love? Come on, woman!"  I can hear him now. And he would say it with such love that I would immediately want to jump up and do exactly what he said.

Only I can't. I am completely paralyzed by my emotions right now. Can't sleep at night, can't remember anything, can't stop crying, can't stop trying to make some or any sense of all of this. He'd be right, too, about the negative energy. I can feel it consuming me inside, leaving ashes instead of that fire the burned in me when he was alive.  How did our perfect life fall completely apart like this?  Why did he have to get cancer? Why did he have to die? Why not me? He deserved to live more than me. He's the one who was special. Why am I still here? Without him.

I hear people say sometimes that there should be a special Hell for those who commit heinous crimes, those unspeakable deeds that shock and appall most of us.  I don't think I ever really believed in Hell at all but now I think that maybe I was wrong. I feel like I am living in a special Hell that is reserved for those who lose the ones they love most. In this Hell, you are somebody living out of body, on the outside looking in, floating untethered from the Earth and surrounded by blackness. This is like a grand punishment but I committed no crime. My only sin, if it is in fact a sin, was that I loved a mortal man too much. Is that why I am being punished? Because I worshipped at the altar of that man? I wonder.

These thoughts that run through my head now are disjointed and confusing. One minute I am almost blind with grief and at another I am overwhelmed with feelings of love for someone who will never again hold my hand, or kiss my lips. Someone who will never say my name again. Yet I still feel the love. Will I always?

I miss you, Dave.