There is mild irony in that, even as Evergreen Park & Recreation District labored mightily throughout the desperate summer of 2011 to purge Evergreen Lake of waterweed’s leafy scourge, it was clearing a path for an infestation no less persistent.

Unlike elodea Canadensis, the new crop of aquatic colonists has been cultivated by the hand of Man. They thrive on the merest shred of sunlight, exploding across the lake’s placid face and crowding its green shores. They’re re-introduced daily from upstream, from downstream, and from distant watersheds where clear Bear Creek waters do not flow. They’re rootless, restless and relentless. They’re “standup paddleboards”, patiently propelled by a highly adaptable species known as “stand up paddleboarders”, who are engaged in a flourishing activity referred to in common speech as “stand up paddleboarding” and in the dialect of devotees as “SUP.”

As in “’Sup?”

“SUP!”

But where waterweed is good mostly for aggravating pedal boaters and confounding fisher-folk, SUP is said to benefit those bestride the bobbing board.

“It’s a good core workout,” explains Heather Allman, who sells pet insurance for a living and drove up from her home in Parker one recent Tuesday morning to stand around on Evergreen Lake for an hour or so. “It’s fairly easy, so we bought paddleboards for the whole family.”

Possessing her own paddleboard, Heather gets to check in with Tyler Garey. An Evergreen High School student with the best summer job ever, Tyler gets to check in folks like Heather before they launch from the private boat ramp.

“I’ll check in 20 or 30 paddleboarders on a weekday, and 40 or more on a weekend,” Tyler says. “They’re mostly adults, and mostly female.” As a dutiful district employee, Tyler has familiarized himself with the nuts and bolts of paddleboarding. “It’s fairly easy,” he says. “And it’s a good core workout.”

Long before it was a good core workout, stand up paddleboarding was simply a way for frustrated surfers to ride the waves in the absence of surf-able swells. The modern sport’s short history credits Waikiki surf instructors Duke Kahanamoku and brothers Leroy and Bobby AhChoy with roughing in SUP’s current dimensions back in the 1940s. By the 1990s it was being taught to Gidgets and grommets in surf schools all over Hawaii. When surf instructor Brian Keaulana added “Beach Boy Surfing” to the prestigious “Buffalo Big Board Classic” at Makaha Beach on Oahu in 2003, it made a splash that hit the mainland like a slow-moving tsunami that finally made landfall in Evergreen in 2011.

“A couple of customers said we should try it,” recalls Lake House director Brad Bednar. “At the time we didn’t know a lot about stand up paddleboarding, but we decided to buy two boards and see what happened.”

What happened is that six years later EPRD owns 40 boards which, on the aforementioned Tuesday, were the responsibility of Tyler’s classmate, Kit Hager. Kit’s summer job – the second best ever – is to rent the district’s sleek armada of foam-core solo paddleboards for $20 per hour, and its handful of larger, inflatable, multiple-occupancy units for $35 per hour. Like an experienced ice cream store clerk, Kit may no longer crave the product, but she’s good at selling it.

“It’s a good core workout,” she points out. “And it’s pretty easy.”

A 2015 report by the Outdoor Foundation named SUP as the nation’s most popular outdoor activity among first-time participants. According to that document, in 2010 about a million people stood up and paddled. There were 2 million stand up paddleboarders afloat in 2013, and by 2014 that number had risen to 2.8 million. By Bednars calculations, the Outdoor Foundation’s figures are right on the money.

“In 2015 we had between 5,000 and 6,000 paddleboard rentals,” he says. “Last year it was about 10,000.”

Fact is, EPRD could probably increase its fleet by another 20 paddleboards and still run a waitlist of a sunny Saturday afternoon. It won’t, though. Add the district’s 40 boards to Tyler’s 40-plus independently-flagged vessels and the regular traffic in pedal boats, canoes and sundry sailing craft, and Evergreen Lake is already approaching…er…standing room only, and Bednar isn’t interested in increasing revenue at the expense of customer experience. By limiting rentals to one hour during peak paddleboarding periods, EPRD is able to assure comfortably quick rotation of inventory and ensure all comers their turn at the oar.

“It’s a good core workout,” Bednar remarks.

That’s by all accounts true, but it’s also true that no sport grows by 75 percent in one year just because it’s good for you. If stand up paddleboarding is hacky-sack for a New Millenium, it’s because humans are hard-wired to love the Earth’s most abundant resource and SUP is as close as you can get to the water without getting in it. It’s purest elemental communion to drift upon the cool deeps, warmed by a generous sun and kissed by whispering breezes, bathed in quietude and insulated from clamoring cares ashore, companion only to curious ducks and clouds mirrored in rippled glass.

On the other hand, there is no activity so benign that somebody can’t find a way to make it dangerous, which is where we get whitewater SUP. And there’s no endeavor so freeing that someone won’t regiment it, which explains the World Paddle Association and a flotilla of subsidiary SUP scolds. And there’s no pursuit so inherently tranquil that it can’t be adapted to serve our more aggressive tendencies, as with the proliferation of SUP contests pitting paddle against paddle in areas of speed, distance and personal peril.

By the same token, any pastime, however restful, restorative and rewarding it may be, is a hollow experience at best if you can’t read about somebody else doing it. Thankfully there are now nearly a dozen publications offering stand up paddleboarders lots and lots of words about the greater SUP-sphere. A recent edition of SUP Magazine, for example, presents “Five Gadgets for Paddlers.” In Standup Paddle Magazine we learn of the joys of bone fishing from a paddleboard. The latest issue of internationally-distributed Stand Up Paddle World Magazine introduces readers to the dark pleasures of late-night river paddling in Munich, and SUP Connect blasts the headline “Giant Squid Climbs on Paddle Board.”

SUPing vicariously may not be as enriching as a quiet hour on the water, but that’s okay. If misery loves company, so does ecstasy, and there’s plenty of room aboard the surging sport of stand up paddleboarding. Indeed, egalitarianism is among SUP’s greatest virtues, right alongside this one touted in Stand Up Paddler’s Forum:

“SUP is a Great Core Workout!”