Roll, roll, roll your boat, gently up the . . . Oh, hi! Excuse me for a moment while I blow this river water out of my nose. The world sure looks funny right-side-up. Have you seen my boat around here ...

The kayak’s precise origin story is murky, but sources credit various Indigenous groups of the far north — modern-day Alaska, Greenland and Siberia — with inventing the boat for hunting and fishing.