Recalculating

Eugene, OR
(music) “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot…” was playing from the Ford dealership loudspeaker as I walked across their expansive blacktop towards the service department and my truck. I laughed out loud. The morning had started with a visit from AAA to jump-start the battery and tell me that the alternator was shot and that I should get straight to a service station before my battery charge ran out. They wouldn’t tow my truck with kayaks on top.

I left the truck idling on a slight slope when I returned the Motel 6 key and returned to see fluid pouring out of the back end. Gasoline. I raced through early morning Eugene traffic to the Ford dealership watching the battery charge level wane and the gas gauge drop as I left a trail of damp highway in my wake.

It turns out the battery and the alternator were both worthy of replacement, and somebody had cut the filling hose to my gas tank in an attempt to siphon fuel during the night. The fuel hose cost over $300 and needed to be overnighted from Sacramento, another $50, and another night in Eugene. Total repair bill over $1000.

Recalculating. (in the longsuffering tone of the GPS navigator). It wouldn’t be a trip to Baja without some adventure. Breathe. Forgive.

I need forced stops like this to reconnect with the human side. To pause and breathe. Just be. There is no reason to hurry through to the other side of the moment; there is just more waiting over there. Life seems to make these stops happen when I don’t. They’re generally less expensive when I do it willingly, though. Someday I’ll learn!

It could be worse. I was near enough to a shop to drive myself there with the bad alternator, and didn’t have to leave 4 kayaks beside the road, or more likely stay with 4 kayaks while I watched my truck get hauled off.

Could be better. If I’d have driven further last night maybe nobody would have tried to siphon gas and cut the hose.

Could be worse. Nothing was stolen from the overloaded back of my truck, or from the roof. All that makes $350 look like pocket change.

Could be worse. At least I have money in the account to cover the Ford bill. Unsure about covering the $3,500 importation bill, the $900 in kayak parts waiting in San Diego, and the approximately $1000 in fuel, food and hotels between here and Loreto. But 2 more people are signing up for the Loreto to La Paz trip. Funds seem to trickle in just when needed! Sometimes I stress out a lot about money, but today I’ve decided not to.

I go for a walk to Delta Ponds where a nature trail winds through a park.

Yes, it could be much worse. The late morning sun feels good. Ground I’m sitting on is soft and dry. I sink through the levels of relaxation, breathing slows. Mind wanders, free from its short tether of focus. Sounds float down from the forest and from a distant construction project. Sunlight filters through the canopy. Ducks clear wakes through the lily pads.

A week before leaving home, I had another cancer scare. After a few follow-up tests, the docs decided there wasn’t enough evidence to go on, and that I should return in 6 months for more testing. I will. Meanwhile, with that clearance, I (over)loaded the truck, and headed south, taking it as a reminder to live well and be thankful.

I have this breath that I am breathing right now. It is a gift. As a bonus, I should still be able to get to the border in time to import the kayaks and get to Loreto before running my first course.

The No-Garbage Theory of Chicken Spirits

Nothing disappears. I looked into the yellow and black eye of my chicken as she gasped, and the presence departed from that eye. Where did that breath just go?

I read somewhere of “primitive” cultures without the concept of trash. Where resources are a closed system.

In our lives, garbage goes to that magic place called “away” and new things keep appearing on the shelves. But that’s an illusion. Everything goes somewhere, everything comes from somewhere.

So where does a chicken’s spirit go? Or it’s breath, if you don’t want to grant chickens a spirit. There is something in there that is alive, then it isn’t.

I had a hard time killing this chicken. She had chickenality, which is personality with feathers. But she was a meat bird, I rationalized, of a hybrid breed that will usually die of a heart attack if let live much past its prime butchering age. Besides, somebody was eating the laying hens’ eggs, and that behavior is not to be tolerated in the coop. It was just her time to go.

I cradled her in my arm as she looked around and told her I’d love to meet her again someday, when she’s not the chicken and I'm not the farmer; when we’re more equals. And then I stuffed her gently but firmly into a bucket, pulled her head through a hole in the bottom, and cut her jugular.

I held her head down so she wouldn’t flop out of the bucket as she expired. I apologized, and I sobbed. A chicken takes a long time to completely expire. The eye is lucid, then it blinks. It fades, then returns briefly. The body jerks. One has eons to think and to feel while standing there, knife in one hand, chicken in the other, burgundy blood dripping.

If spirits “come into this world” and go out of it, where is the spirit warehouse?

There was an energy that was trotting around, pecking, scratching, flapping. Now it hangs limp in my hand. Physics gives us the “law of conservation of energy” which says that nothing disappears. That chicken’s breath has gone somewhere. The energy in the flesh has not gone anywhere yet, though it will eventually become part of three things: my body, my activity, and my composting toilet fodder. Poop will become dirt, and then nutrients taken up in a tree. My body, too, will eventually become dirt, taken up by plants. My activity makes body heat and moves resources. So our legacy is dirt, and the things we move. Plus spirit.

One can follow nutrients around. But spirits? Can they appear, like new toys on the shelf, and go, like garbage hauled off in the truck? Then where is the factory, and where is the dump? Or is it the recycling plant? There must be a circle of understanding big enough to encompass the resource flow of spirits.

If rattlesnakes can register the heat left in a mouse’s footprint, and physics can split atoms, should we not be able to measure a spirit and follow its trail as it departs into thin air? Maybe spirit is air itself. It animates a body, and then it stops entering it, and takes that heat back into itself. Is God in the air? Is God the air itself? Is God the Warehouse of spirits? Or is God the warehouse Manager? Or is God just a word for things we can’t measure but need to believe in?

The next steps made the chicken less resemble the entertaining creature I knew, and more resemble food. Scalding, plucking, removing head and feet. Eviscerating. During the final step, I noticed that she was developing chicken testicles inside that body. Sorry, little rooster. Life is full of surprises.

Passage

Nov 5
We’re sandwiched between 2 low pressure systems, one chasing us out of the tropics, and one preparing to welcome us to New Zealand. The ride is getting rougher. We’re heeled over now and leaping through the waves, trying to hold onto our SW course as the wind veers slowly against us.

We set off November 3rd from Tongatapu, among the last of a flotilla of cruisers headed for New Zealand. According to Bob McDavitt, New Zealand weather guru, those of us leaving now should just miss the worst of it.

It’s an infamous, dangerous thing from a distance. Whatever it is, the New Zealand crossing included. As you approach the challenge, you find more folks who’ve done it before and survived. Then you come to the edge yourself, get a running start for nerve, and jump. You find yourself swimming among peers. Suddenly it’s not a big scary thing looming ahead, but daily challenges you rise to meet.

That is half. The other half is that we are more resilient than we think.

The traditional canoe Hine Moana set out a couple hours after we did, but we haven’t seen her. She can move at more than twice our speed and may have passed in the night. At times I thought I saw the crab claw sails cutting through the darkness, but those were just phantoms of sleepiness in the wee hours of my watch.

Rafts of floating pumice part as Misty plows through. Henrick scoops them up in a bucket. Other cruisers have them piling up on the deck. Lightweight and white, some have tiny barnacles riding on them. Several are bigger than softballs. Somebody on the radio mentioned a volcanic event a few months ago in the Kermadecs, a group of islands east of New Zealand.

I am sitting on deck lubing strap buckles and working them and looking at swells when a big white bird catches my eye. ”Albatross!” I cry out mistakenly. It’s a masked booby or a gannet at a distance. Henrick has already seen one for real, and I’m trying hard to catch up.

East and SE swells cross each other at tight angles, breaking the swell in to segments. Like shadows at night from two cabin lights overlapping on the wall, swells both pass through and affect each other. Light is waves, too, after all.

We pound and rise obliquely into the swell, moving along with the flock of southward cruisers. Astarte, some 18nm ahead of us tonight, is the closest neighbor who checks into the Drifters Net. How fun it would be to see the whole white-winged migration from space. Some, like us, use wind-steering, and our courses curve with the wind changes. Others on autopilot follow a straight bearing.

Nov 6
25 degrees 03 minutes south. 179 degrees 42 minutes east. The sea gets rougher. There is no sleep.

1am
In rough seas I comfort myself with thoughts of home. The flat, solid green of field, The predictable rows of garden. But the backlog of farm work and business that awaits my return looms over my mental wanderings like a wave about to crash, and I find no refuge in those thoughts. There is no backlog of work, I tell myself. There is only now. I return seek refuge in the gale. In acceptance of the present. The hiss of water past the bow. Wind moans in the rigging. Waves slam and shush over the deck.

Tension grips my neck and back from trying to hold the wind-steering together from sheer willpower. Occasionally the windsteering arm disconnects and the boat goes astray. I anticipate the pregnant, peaceful pause. Then the shudder of sails, the unwanted jibe, and violent careening of the boat. A couple of times we go so far over that water gushes up the sink and flows into the galley shelves. Illogically, I try to shove it back down with my hands.

But willpower won’t help. I try to relax and accept the risk. There is no tension except what I hold onto. There is no backlog but what I create.

The whole boat shudders as a wave slams the hull and showers the cockpit. Slowly I learn to listen and accept. Over the sounds of wind and water, something clunks in the cupboard, and rain drills on the hatch. The anchor chain rattles in its metal tube. I listen, amazed at the punishment a sailboat can take. Ridiculously overpriced hardware seems worth every penny now. I roll with the boat in my berth, relax, and try to grasp that we are actually moving towards New Zealand through this messy, heartless expanse of sea and sky.

On the morning Drifter’s Net, the people around us estimate the wind at 40knots. We don’t have a gauge, but it gets uncomfortable enough that we decide to pull over at the next hotel. Clean linens, a warm shower, room service, and a good night’s sleep sound so tempting. There will be a painting over the bed, a red sailboat on a lake with the sun shining on it. I fixate on that painting.

The Pacific Drifters Net becomes family. The voices, the boat names, the single-digit reading of coordinates. We follow positions and snippets of story.

The Rose. Her captain broke his leg stepping onto the dock in Nuku’alofa, and he flew home. His wife’s father flew in, losing his luggage along the way, to help her sail the boat to NZ. They were joined by Falcon, an energetic young man raised on his parents boat. He had paddled up to Misty in Vava’u in his Marquesan outrigger and wanted to learn to sea kayak, so we swapped for an hour or so, chasing boat wakes and rolling about in the harbor. Now Falcon’s parents wait on their boat in Tonga, listening for The Rose’s progress and Falcon’s eager voice. He checks in one morning with a chuckle in his voice and reports their sea conditions as ”bigger than every one else’s!”

The flock moves along, blind dots on a grid. Some faster, some slower, some easting, some westing, some nearing each other. A boat within 10nm we can’t see from the deck. Curve of the earth, cloudy horizon, rain. They don’t show on the radar either as the seas create too much interference. We grope along, reading coordinates and bearings off to each other over the VHF radio when we’re close. We discuss forecasts, complain of the rough seas. Of course we complain of the calm winds when those come, too, but that is not now. Among the boats nearby, at least one crew member from each one is down with the queasies, which puts me in good company. It’s comforting to hear others complain, somehow. We don’t feel so alone or so wimpy.

My favorite complainer is Michael on Astarte. ”Welcome to the southern ocean,” someone tells him, and he replies with petulance and enthusiasm, ”I don’t LIKE the Southern Ocean!” He complains with such wry gusto that I actually enjoy suffering with him.

Nov 7
Our standard night watch on board Misty consists of one person checking the GPS and looking outside every 15-30 minutes, depending on the situation. It’s so rough tonight that we latch down the companionway hatch so we can’t go out. We’ll take our chances. Everything is sealed, but still water manages to force its way in. Tonight our routine is lying awake and listening, and hourly scooping out the bilge.

We get pushed hard over several times. Once, some clothes on one berth leap the isle to land on the opposite berth, just in time for a gallon of water to weasel its way through the dorado vent and douse the clothes, pillow, berth, and me. I flip the pillow over, push the clothes away, slide a little further down in the berth, and close my eyes again.

Not content with hurling water at us, the sea pelts us with rocks. Floating pumice rocks that we thought were so cute bobbing along like marshmallows in the calm seas now hammer like hail on the cabin top as waves break over. Under just a reefed staysail we drift along at 2.5 knots, except when gusts lay us over then suddenly scoot us along at 6 knots or so.

Sometime in the night the VHF radio comes to life. With its close range, nobody is usually within talking distance, but we leave it on just in case. The New Zealand Air Force is calling a boat called Adventure Bound to change course in response to a mayday call some 50nm away from them. I recognize Adventure Bound’s name as the vessel closest to our stern at the last Drifter’s Net. We clearly hear the Air Force, but nothing from Adventure Bound, so they must be over 20nm away. Evidently they are responding, judging from half of the conversation.

A sailboat called Windigo either rolled or took a knockdown. Interesting terminology, ”took a knockdown.” As if it were something you might order in a restaurant. ”I’ll take a knockdown please, with a side of fries.”

The cool, clear voice of the Air Force radio man says that Windigo’s crew had sustained injuries, and a plane had dropped a life raft. My throat tightens with the thought of the injured crew riding out the night in these seas in a raft.

We carry on. Henrick snoozes in exhaustion. I lie awake listening, rolling, thinking of Windigo, and believing in the sturdiness of the boat around us. Wondering what else there is to believe in right now. And trying to relax enough to keep my insides inside.

The AIS alarm beeps, alerting us to the approach of Aquamante, a sailboat we saw at an anchorage in Tonga. I hail them on the VHF before the AIS loses track of them. In response, a brilliant white strobe catches my eye in the ever-moving dark sea. It’s the captain on deck waving a powerful spotlight. After spotting them, I turn on Misty’s spreader lights, illuminating our deck and lower rigging. Aquamante responds via radio a few minutes later to see they have a visual on us as well.

After that, if I look steadily in the right direction, I can occasionally make out the green of their tricolor through the moving mountains of water. They pass in front of us towards the west. We keep in contact for a couple days, as far as the VHF signal stretches, and swap weather information.

Santa Paz passes behind us later in the night, headed west as well. By morning we’ve closed in on Astarte, who hove-to through the night.

Nov 8
Wind drops into the 30s overnight, but gusts still make us wary of raising more sail. That, and the thought of Windigo. We’re still under just a reefed staysail. During the morning check-in, one cruiser wishes he could take a road grader to the waves and flatten a path to New Zealand. I believe he would have some traffic behind him if he succeeded.

Henrick is sicker than I have ever seen him. He’s throwing up stuff he ate back in 5th grade. We engage in the team-building exercise of bailing the forepeak bilge. I stick my head down into the sloshing confinement to dredge up a bowl full of bilge water and pour it into the toilet, balancing the movements of the boat with the tilt of the bowl. Henrick stands over me in a better position to pump out the manual toilet. Holy water. Bended knee. We take turns hourly in each position.

Miles pass tortuously below our hull as waves crash over the deck. We wait for time to pass, seas to subside, the green tide of stomach bile to recede. Miraculously there are still 2 kayaks on our deck. Two wash buckets went missing from the cockpit. If that’s all that goes missing, I’ll be thankful. I feel more guilty for polluting the ocean than sorry for their loss.

The struggles bring us closer to people we hardly know. The Drifters Net is an emotional and informational lifeline. A congregation of believers. The ritual of coordinates and sea conditions. Peppered with occasional humor. There is news of staysails ripped, autopilots broken, propane tanks washed overboard, floats lost, injuries, the rescue underway.

Adventure Bound is still pounding upwind, making less than 2 knots, with 30nm still to go to the 2-person crew of Windigo, thought to be in the life raft, and expected to still be there for at least 15 more hours. Seas in the area are still building, with winds clocked steady in the mid 40s, gusting into the 50s. New Zealand keeps an Air Force presence, circling overhead until needing to return for refueling and being replaced by another flight.

My emotions are worn thing and I find tears running down my cheeks as I listen to the captain of Adventure Bound, sounding exhausted and frustrated. Emotions must be high there, too.

More news on the net: Obama reelected. Pot legalized in Colorado and Washington. That feels so far away.

Normally when cruising, like many others, we seek solitude. But on this passage, the camaraderie that began as entertainment has become elemental.

Beyond the Drifter’s Net, there are groups of friends who have schedules of checking in with each other. Astarte invites us to listen when they check in with Victory, whom we’d met in Tonga, and Superted, who was already far ahead in their sleek 50-something foot boat that was named by one of their kids after a teddy bear. Victory took 20cm of water in their bilge through their engine air intake because they were heeled so far over. Before discovering and stemming the flow, the captain had asked his wife to gather their ditch kit and be prepared. I could picture her face from the one time we’d met. She was getting a haircut on the back deck of their boat from Astarte’s Barbara, and laughing at the joyful, rustic luxury of an open-air haircut. Again, those thin emotions almost get the better of me.

The washing machine continues its agitate cycle on the other side of our brass-rimmed portals. Water, bubbles, water, bubbles. A swell lifts us with that weightless tilting feeling, then shoves us hard to starboard. I don’t lie in the berth so much as I lie on the side of the hull. Henrick has the floor this time, with mattress and blankets wedged between the berth and the seats. He can’t fall off the floor, not even heeled over.

Sometimes we think we hear voices beyond the hull. A chipper Australian woman chatters from the bookshelf, perhaps a ghost of Misty Past, or the working of a line in a block on deck. I can almost make out her words. Children chatter in the gurgling of a wave.

Electric blue swells with frothing crests look like so many houses with frilly latticework eaves. We could drive Misty into the garage like a car, park her there in the still darkness, and rest. But she just keeps bobbing, or sometimes tripping, over them, and going on.

Electric blue swells with foam-streaked flanks are great running beasts. Nature in breathless stampede. Slow motion captures the quiver of flesh, the flex of muscles, the height of withers. Only the spray of breath is in real time as it takes to the air and shoots several meters forward. The immense, ponderous blue herd in the sunlight is utterly beautiful.

In the night I peek out the portal at the dark beasts galloping drunkenly past my nose, and they glowed blue fire. A storm-tossed mane, a lathered neck, a snort of breath, all bright with life-fire of bioluminescence.

The secret is not to resist. When the beasts ram and pounce and claw at Misty, and throw her on her side, don’t resist. Just accept. Sideways is the new down. Lie down if possible, and let the energy flow through you like silken seaweed in the stream. Let it knead you, slow and elastic, like dough, against the walls and hull. Let go the control you don’t have anyway. I search for tension and let my mind massage those places into acceptance. Face, shoulders, belly. Life is a ride on waves of energy, some days more literally so.

In the night, we, Astarte, and Marungaru all come within a couple miles of each other. Henrick is out of commission, very sick. Pale with red cheeks, unable to keep water down, or stand up for long. The radar, distracted by the big seas, doesn’t pick up either of the other boats. Thankfully, Marungaru has a crew of 4 and a constant watch, and Astarte has a policy of constant watches on deck too. They agree to keep a lookout and VHF radio contact. I peek, listen, and catnap, and can let Henrick sleep.

Marungaru calls about midnight to say they have us in sight. Between then and about 2am, all 3 of us share some intimate sea space. We turn Misty two clicks downwind on the wind steering to alleviate the crunch. Marungaru passes ahead, a green dot occasionally appearing above the crests of black monsters.

I have a hard time getting Misty back on course, so Henrick goes out to tweak the wind steering. He comes back in, slides the three companionway boards down into their slot, pulls the top hatch shut, and latches it. Seconds later a wave crashes over from the stern quarter and forces a few gallons in around the companionway hatch. Salt water washes down the wall over the electrical panels and baptizes the navigation computer, which dies. That was an expensive wave, but could have been a whole lot worse if Henrick had still been out there, and the companionway open.

We eventually resume our course, and Astarte crosses in front of us towards the west. I don’t see them, but we keep in radio contact with our coordinates.

Nov 9
Morning and the sun is out. Great shining swells still roll by, a little further apart, and a little less steep. Spray is no longer strewn from every wavelet. Twenty-five knots and 3 meters of swell, roughly. Henrick’s feeling better. He puts up the mainsail, triple reefed. In raising it, a number of pumice rocks fall out of the folds. The waves had lodged them up there when they broke over Misty’s cabin top. Now we’re leaping along at 5-6 knots, occasionally more in the gusts.

I start to clean up the saltwater and scum that has found its way into unlikely places. The galley shelves are first.

News on the net in the morning is that Windigo, battered and taking on water, is in the company of a merchant ship, and 7 New Zealand air force flights took turns monitoring the situation through the night. We often heard them over our VHF. The Windigo crew had not used the life raft, but stayed in their boat. Adventure Bound’s 2-person crew were exhausted from pounding for a couple of days into conditions reported as 40-55kts of wind and 10 meter seas. They were requested to stand by, too. They are anxious to get on their way and a bit frustrated at how much resource has been required to remedy Windigo’s folly of having too much sail up in a gale. A New Zealand warship is also racing to the scene at 30kts, as reported by sailing vessel Aka at 30kts, whom they passed in the night.

On a happier note, traditional sailing canoe Hine Moana weathered the storm, moved up in the pack, and is especially enjoying the sunshine, since they have to hand-steer on deck with no shelter, day and night.

There are lies, damn lies, and forecasts. We listen to Gulf Harbor Radio in the mornings, occasionally catch Russell Radio in the evenings, as well as snippets of weather fill during the Drifters’ Net. Michael lets us know what’s on Astarte’s grib files. No matter how much we all discuss it, the weather does its own thing in the end.

Today I learn that Astarte is a Phoenecian goddess of passion & love. Michael and Barbara renamed the boat years ago in Florida in a great ceremony. Bit by bit we get to know our passage neighbors as this whole migration bounces and glides south. Michael faithfully relays our reports to the Drifters Net because our SSB signal isn’t strong enough, probably because of a corroded ground connection. Henrick doesn’t want to disconnect it and run the chance of fouling it up worse while we’re out here. As it is, we’re having fun with Astarte, promising a cold beer for every relay. They get a giggle out of it, too.

Bits of humor--somebody reporting calm and sunny in the midst of the gale. Frustration shared--Catharpin Blue can’t hold the course they want, but neither can the rest of us. Expectations--Superted is disappointed with their 7 knots of speed. He takes a good teasing for saying that (most of us would be thrilled!). Helpfulness-- people relay information from neighboring boats whose SSB radios have failed.

When boats reach port, it’s like they fall off the end of the earth. Names we heard twice a day never get mentioned again. Slowly, the community dissolves. Perhaps we’ll meet someone on the dock or pub or in the marine store when we get there. But lives will go separate ways, each carrying a piece of memory of the NZ migration of 2012. The Windigo rescue.

Henrick and I enjoy a dinner date once we feel like eating again. We share the slip-sliding adventure of cooking hash browns and eggs, both wearing socks now to stay warm. Socks don’t grip the floor at all. Now we grope for toe-holds and places to wedge the feet as we move about. We put on some music and enjoy the companionship. No showers in a week. Separate berths. Not the most sexy dinner date, to be sure. But a nice, close feeling that runs much deeper.

How to cover the leftovers? The plastic lids have escaped. I recall hearing them leap from their cubby one night and scuttle across the floor. ”Huh,” I grunted, deciding that at least they wouldn’t fall off the floor, and with that, fell back asleep and forgot about them. Henrick recalls seeing some errant lids and shoving them somewhere, but can’t remember where. So it goes. A good cleanup will reveal a lot, I’m sure.

The rough weather hit before I could cook the soaked garbanzo beans, resulting in an accidental sprouting. I’m not sure I like sprouted flavor better, but it was an interesting experiment. It makes the incorrigible gardener in me want to soak all kinds of beans to see how they sprout.

Nov 11
Adventure Bound wants to change their name. Suggestions? Wimpy. Chickadee, Lilly Pad, Light Airs, Three Stooges, Inept, The Flea, Frayed Knot. Henrick suggests his longtime favorite boat name ”Slacker”. For now they remain Adventure Bound, and are at last free to head for Opua.

The Windigo crew remained on board their boat until the New Zealand warship arrived and hoisted them in a sling aboard for warm showers, good food, and medical care. They left the boat adrift, which concerned the next fleet of cruisers who were making the New Zealand migration.

Tints and solvents in the paint locker swim about in 4” of salt water. Cleaning that is this morning’s project. Gentle seas, a purring motor, and a pile of rusty cans and plastic bottles. The bag full of rags is hung to dry like a gypsy caravan in the wind. Latex gloves flutter on the line like so many energetic musicians playing a blue piano sky. It’s not a project you hope to repeat often, but the doing of it is a pleasant activity together in the sun and cool air of 30 degrees south latitude in the middle of a wide, gently rolling sea.

Nov 12
The wind dies. Then blasts again. Like a car, zero to 20 in 60 seconds or less. From every direction on the left side of the compass. Black squalls lay us over on our ear. Petrels cartwheel by. Gigantic rainbows smile upside down over us. Our course looks drunken. A western detour. Southing. Then back to the east, the line on the GPS wavers every few miles. It looks like we’re trying to carve a pretty scalloped pattern on the sea. Last night in the calm, we drifted in a nice hook back towards Tonga. Then caught some wind and started a SE run in the actual direction of our destination.

Life is pleasant on board if you’re not fixated on getting somewhere. Sunset dinner in the cockpit. Homemade biscuits. Watching the sun set repeatedly as the swells make and remake the horizon. Two green flashes in one night. Clear as a bright green crayon as it sets, rises, and re-sets.

Nov 13
The race is on! The race for who can come in last from our fleet of Tonga-to-Opua cruisers. There are 3 of us straggling about 150nm from Opua, all with engine issues. Ours slowly lost power, and now won’t exceed 1900rpms even when the throttle is all the way down, so Henrick prefers not to use is until we can solve the issue. The competition is Morning Cloud, who runs on 2 out of 3 cylinders, and Astarte, who has a long list. Neither of them wants to go by engine either, until absolutely necessary.

Morning Cloud is a 36’ 50-year old wood boat with Selwin and Joanne aboard, and centuries of sailing experience. Astarte is 42’ of fiberglass, cruising continuously for the past 2 years. Misty of course is 36’ of red-hot steel, almost 50 years herself. Michael puts his money on Morning Cloud for first in. Morning Cloud may win the award for most congenial for calling to ask if we need a tow as we approach land. I believe their engine is in worse shape than ours.

Nov 14
Less than 50nm to go to Opua under the anemic light of a partial solar eclipse. We take turns looking through Henrick’s welding helmet. First a nibble from the top left corner. Eventually a yellow crescent. The wind bites cold in the lack of sun.

”I see New Zealand!” calls Henrick. Just as I pop my head over the torn dodger cover, a great white spray launches up from the bow. I duck back down but Henrick, too involved with the distant smudge of land, gets soaked. We laugh. Somehow, the trio of solar eclipse, sighting of land, and dousing of sea seem a perfect welcome.

Meanwhile, inside the cabin, long droplets of water stream from the center hatch onto Henrick’s berth. Good thing we’re arriving soon. We stave the leak as best we can and put a towel on the bed to absorb the rest. Our speed is good, and we’re too thankful to be arriving to care about a little water now.

The luck of our position, further west of Morning Cloud and Astarte, allows Misty to make a straight shot into the Bay of Islands, while our neighbors have to tack. We make it to ”Q”, the quarantine dock as dusk falls. Morning Cloud comes in shortly after. Astarte pounds along into short, brutal seas, making 2 knots for another day before her steering cable disconnects itself in protest. Michael reconnects it, and eventually they, too, enjoy a long awaited arrival at Q dock.

Adventure Bound makes it in some days later. They receive a hero’s welcome for their part in the rescue, which they downplay. Some big-hearted cruisers arrange a free marina berth for them to rest and recuperate, and a number of donations from related businesses.

Their arrival completes the passage of the fleet that left Tonga just before the first big gale of the 2012 New Zealand passage season. A number of us caught the corner of that gale, but Adventure Bound and Windigo got the brunt. Unless you count those who stayed in Tongatapu. They recorded winds of 65 knots, plus gusts, in the anchorages. Boats pulled anchor, dinghies flew through the air. It was never a named cyclone because of a technicality. It formed its strength from winds aloft instead of from convection, according to Bob McDavitt, New Zealand weather guru who was in Opua for the All Points Rally, welcoming cruisers to New Zealand.

All in all, we’re glad we left when we did, and thankful to be in sheltered waters now.

Bouyancy

“Shells sink, dreams float…”
-Jimmy Buffet

I used to think there were 2 separate circles: Possible and Impossible.

Just out of college, I worked at Fred Meyer for pennies over minimum wage. Clipping coupons, living cheap, and barely having the money for a tank of gas to go hike the mountains on the weekend, I hated the slavery of money. Hated being stuck. Then I met Dan. In a year, we quit work, got married, and started bicycling across the country. We took 11 months, and stopped to work along the way. That trip was the beginning of my change of mind about “impossible”.

What if Possible and Impossible overlapped? Or, more radically, what if they are the same circle? What if all that is impossible is possible, depending on mindset?

It’s been said that even the longest journey begins with one step. Just sticking out one foot, and trusting the weight to it. How often is that step left untaken because it is believed impossible?

Impossible: I can’t because ______ . Job, family, home, debts, distance, gravity.
Possible: How? Sell this, restructure that. Where do I start? How much time to allow? How much helium does it take to loft a dream?

With Henrick on Misty, we were never completely ready to start our voyage. Always one more project to tackle, one more webpage to update. After pushing the departure date back several times, we just left.

Strip “I can’t” to the bare naked fear underneath, look at it bravely, tenderly, in the eye. You can choose your priorities. Or let fear do it for you.

There have been nights on all my intrepid wanderings when I would have traded adventure for a place to call home, a secure roof. Even a steady job. But I’ve made choices, and they have their rewards, too.

“Forgive the moment,” say some philosophies. Accept what is. Change what you choose to and embrace the rest. All other options involve resentment.

On our present voyage, I can hate the sea for bouncing us around. Grumble at Misty for being such a cork. Resent my stomach for its pathetic sensitivity. Or breathe and look for a horizon, in the distance or within. The down times are opportunities for regeneration.

When Misty was in the boatyard, we had written on the wall, “Anything is Possible”. Below that, “No matter what happens, it’s OK.” Life without fear. Is it possible?

Possible is a pool. You can dive in. Move your limbs in all directions. Leap like a dolphin. Float on your back and make snow angels in pure liquid. Once you get the feel for the water, once you trust it, it supports you. Movement is refreshing. Possibilities, invigorating.

Impossible is the sinking pool. Weight belts of fear. Flailing of ineffective movements, vertical clawing at the air for salvation.

Often I wake up and dive into the wrong pool. The Polynesian internet connection for which I paid $70 for 20 hours is counting down but not working. There’s so much piled up computer work that I can’t breathe, let alone go for a paddle. This morning a migraine fells me, and I can’t even look at a computer screen.

OK, recalibrate. I can breathe. I can breathe deeply, with awareness. I can feel the knotted muscles of my face, and untie them. Feel the tension in shoulders and relax it. The squint around my eyes. The fist in my belly. Breathe. Unwind. Feel the light Tahitian breeze coming in through the hatch. Hear the surf on the outer reef, a passing siren, and Henrick working on his blog.

Forgive the moment. Accept what is. And find the buoyancy again. The journey of a lifetime begins with one step. This one.

The Evolution of References

The dark night was the first book of poetry and the constellations were the poems.
- Chet Raymo An Intimate Look at the Night Sky

I left the lights of Loreto behind, obscured by passing swells and eventually by the roundness of the sea upon the globe.

Evening worked the last of its magic with fading colors in the sky. Venus, my first friend of the night, shone in the western sky over the mountains. Jupiter hid behind a cloud bank to the east before peeking out. The beauty. The freedom of paddling back to camp down the 10 mile wide corridor between Carmen Island and the Loreto coast.

Ahead, the dark headland of Punta Coyote aligned below a distant triple peak. I paddled to hold that course. The gap between Punta Coyote and Danzante Island, which I had always thought of as a crossing, now looked like a narrow target.

Even after stars appeared, the ambient light continued to fade until the darkness was complete. No moon shone. Fear. The half-light in the waves felt ominous. My kayak, small. My faith in it and my motor—my body—shaky. Punta Coyote dissolved into the mountains beyond. The triple peak became a faint swell on the horizon, difficult to distinguish from the much bigger more distant mountain to the left and the double peak to the right.

As in life, our aids to navigation, or our perspective of them, evolve. Though my Punta Coyote reference was gone, Danzante Island’s dark hump gave guidance. Lights of occasional cars descending the mountains shone clear in the gap, and went black behind Coyote, to reappear in glimpses much further north. Puerto Escondido’s lights glowed another reference.

In the evolution of references, in the adaptation of eyes, mind, body, there was comfort.

The zodiacal light or “sun pillar” glowed faintly behind the western stars. Venus set. Vega, Altair, Deneb burned their fires high. The swan, the eagle, the leaping dolphin. Poetry of the ancients kept me company from above.

Something flapped or flopped out of my path with haste and agitation of bioluminescence. The constellations below. Waves around crested with their own light. Bioluminescence tumbled in my bow wake and surrounded my paddle blade. Even illuminated my stern wake as I descended a wave. A hanging stern draw carved a brilliant parallel wake if I ran straight, or converged if I turned the kayak.

My body interacted with the waves by feel. The rattle of the bow toggle against hull at the beginning of a surf usually indicated a short steep ride that often wanted to end with a broaching turn. Some waves had the perfect push and I could paddle downhill on them for long rides. My sail helped to catch the waves, then flapped limply as the speed of the wave outraced the push of the wind.

After 12nm, Punta Coyote outgrew the mountains beyond to loom large and close. Sounds of waves at its base. Three hours. Another 30 minutes to camp and the constellations of home. Patty & Mike’s TV. Christmas lights in the bushes. A glow from within Jay and Diane’s little camper, reflecting faintly off Henry & Joan’s old trailer. Low bushes, shallow reef, silhouette of Michael’s truck against the sky, and finally my gap in the shrubbery. The evolution of references leading me home.

Monserrate in 24 hours

November 4, 8:50pm. Danzante Island, campsite DZ05. I arrived with the west wind, the unruly one. Back in camp it blew the wrong way into the stove, picked the shade tarp up and played with it, then shoved it down on my head.

I left camp in the dark at 6:30pm and set the sail for the wind to play with too. West is offshore, with its hazards like the further out you get the worse it is, and it’s hard to get back to safety unless there’s something to catch you on the other side. My intent was to paddle to Monserrate Island, 15nm out, then wait for the forecasted turning of the wind and ride it back. You know how reliable forecasts are.

Half a mile offshore, some gusts got my attention by tipping the kayak hard to the left. Waves were only about a foot, well within my comfort, but it was also dark, and everything feels a bit more exhilarating in the dark.

My intent was a night training run with some wind and waves. If I’m going through with the Crazy Plan, I should be comfortable riding seas throughout an entire night, or I should know that I’m not comfortable with it and forget the idea. Funny how a little idea like crossing the Sea of Cortez can get me out here where I hadn’t really considered it before.

Before I left, I talked with my beach neighbor Jay who had just returned from the day’s fishing in his motor boat. He said it was roughest offshore from Ligui canyon. That makes sense, how the wind funnels through there. Also for him, the rest of his trip would have been sheltered by the coastal mountains as he hugged the shoreline. Fetch. I had to add the effect of distance the wind would be blowing over the water. Fifteen NM by the time I got to Monserrate. How big would the waves be there? How strong the wind?

I motor-sailed my kayak towards the south tip of Danzante Island, which partly obscured my view of Monserrate, if I could see Monserrate in the moonlight, which I wasn’t quite sure. A light on a Danzante Island beach called El Arroyo was probably from the outfitting company I used to work for. They would be cleaning up their last dinner, which would have been a chili relleno casserole in the dutch oven, with a cabbage salad on the side, perhaps dusted with sand from the wind blowing directly onto their beach. Something about too much predictability I’m allergic to. Which is why I’m here skimming through the swells and somebody else is tending that light on the beach.

Spray flies off the bow, catches the wind and showers me. Again and again. I’m in a short sleeved paddle jacket and quite comfortable with the warm shower and the cool wind. Strokes are light and fast as the sail pulls the kayak along the growing swells. Water gurgles against the hull.

I will head south of Danzante Island, into the wind funnel from Ligui canyon. I want to feel the strength of the wind. To feel the waves collide with the perpetually opposing current that lives there. From there I will decide if I go to Monserrate Island. I will stop at one of the sea stacks in the Candeleros group and stretch before continuing. This is the plan.

Swells are exciting and surf rides frequent as I arrive at the stack. After stowing the sail, I thread between rocks into a protected pool from which I intend to step out onto a rock shelf. Water sloshes up and down. Wind funnels through my hideout, strong and sustained. Sounds of water crashing all about. Dark shapes hint at their craggy nature in the light of my headlamp. Sparkling ripples rush by over a shallow shelf and shatter into spray against little rocks. I struggle to maneuver closer, then in a moment change my mind, pivot, glide out of the pool, and head for the shelter of Danzante Island.

Decision made, I feel relief. I haven’t done a Very Stupid Thing tonight. Yes, sometimes I have to push the limits, but tonight isn’t one of those times. That means I can play in the mini tide race between here and Danzante Island. For about a mile I paddle without the sail, trying to assess how I’d feel about the conditions in the daylight. Broadside to two foot whitecaps, about 15kts plus gusts. I’d be content. The current adds interest. I watch island silhouettes for signs of my drift, but the current and wind seem to be about even in their effect, and I’m headed straight.

Nearer to the island is a rock that resembles a submarine. I can’t see it, but I feel the waves steepen, and figure I must be nearing the underwater shelf next to it that makes the best standing waves. I turn and catch some good rides. Bury the bow up to the front hatch. Moonlit shards of water tumble off my deck. Night surfing! Whoo-hoo!

The west wind bends and accelerates around the south tip of Danzante Island, and from here runs with the current up the east side of the island. Quickly the waves flatten out. I hoist the sail, taking 2 tries to get the mast up. The gusts are impressive, as I hang onto a stern rudder and fly along. The sail suddenly jibes in an ungraceful flop from one side to the other. Then it flaps limply. My kick-ass tailwind has just met the air coming over Danzante’s low spot. I wrap up the sail and paddle into my favorite beach on this island. I am drenched completely. Soggy pony tail, salt encrusted eyes.

Instead of being out tonight pushing the limits, I’m comfortably rolled into a tarp with a blanket-padded rock for a pillow, on a beach that feels like home, in the company of a very familiar stuffed moose. Sounds of water lapping on the rocky shore. The sounds increase. Gusts press my tarp hard against me. The kayak next to me shudders in the wind. I’m very glad to be here, and not out there. I hear rockfalls from the cliffs through the night, probably teased into jumping by the wind.

November 5, 9:50am. Don’t look now, but I’m naked on a sandy beach in the sun enjoying a leisurely brunch on Monserrate Island. Leisurely because all I have to do now is wait for the wind to die or shift to another direction so I can go back without too much effort.

I left Danzante Island at dawn. The wind had calmed considerably from the night’s fitful throwing of rocks, rocking of boats, and massaging of human tarp-burritos. Still the spray occasionally launched itself from the tops of whitecaps. The sun rose over Santa Catalina Island, another 20 miles out from where I bobbed along. It rose perfectly in position to climb the sky behind the sail. Paddling east in the morning can be brutal on the eyes, but this was perfect.

The sail pulled me along nicely. Up to two knots during my snack breaks. Five and six while paddling. When the sun ran out of sail to climb and shone on my face, I turned to ride the waves at a better surfing angle and arrived shortly at the long blonde beach of Monserrate. Three hours and fifteen minutes to Monserrate, 11.5 nm.

When I’m out paddling, at first I catch myself looking about at the mountains and the islands. Their lighting, their shapes. I count the time to the next landing. I am a terrestrial creature looking for home. Soon I look at the water. Its texture. Its colors. The swells and wind ripples are often at odds with each other somehow. Multiple directions of swell cross each other. Whether the whitecap tumbles listlessly or claws hungrily at the water as it scrambles forward. I am a sea creature at home for a time.

I project ahead to a longer crossing, the Crazy Plan. Some 30 hours in the kayak, with a 7-hour warm-up. I project further to the Pacific crossing dream. Weeks, months. Bigger boat. More room to stretch out. Better stocked galley, I hope, as I eat another Bimbo granola bar, strawberry flavor.

It may never happen, this Crazy Plan to cross the Sea of Cortes. I will make that decision when I get there. Or the weather or other timings may make the decision for me. That’s ok. If I don’t go forward now believing in it, acting on that belief, communicating to the universe that that is what I want, I will have closed my own door. I won’t do that--I won’t give in to a fear of failure before I’ve tried.

Five hours, multiple journal pages, power naps, and a long walk later, two things happen. The wind shifts, and a sailboat arrives. I visit with the family on Eyone for a bit, and take the NE wind back home. Fifteen NM in four hours exactly. The last four I was back on the track of my morning loop, going the other direction. I thought I’d see how fast I could do it now, for fun and because the sun had just set and I wanted to get home. Fifty three minutes. With a Greenland stick, in a Romany. No sail. I must have had some current assisting, but still it’s amazing what the body can do. Most amazingly, it felt good! This Crazy Plan might work after all.

Seven Life Lessons from the Boatyard

Moving towards deliberate consciousness.

Kayaking. From basic principles of physics, to finer points of paddling technique, to how we interact, kayaking is just a tool for life to teach us what’s true. This has been my life philosophy for many years. Now it’s starting to expand to bigger boats.

Today I painted the wine-red hull and put another coat of epoxy paint in the forward part of the bilge. Everything wants to tear apart a boat: salt water, sun, heat, movement. Paint is one of those things that holds it together, like social etiquette.

On a sailboat, even in the boatyard, it pays to make every move a conscious one. Hit your head in a confined space enough and you’ll learn. Try to avoid the freshly painted bits while living among them. Don’t drop the tools overboard. In life, we don’t get to do it over again, either. Here are some life lessons from the last month in the boatyard:

• Projects go easier by moving slowly enough to think.
• Prepare well.
• Change the perspective when necessary, rather than struggling from the position you’re in just because you’re there.
• Give a project or a person the time they need, even if it’s longer than expected.
• Adjust expectations frequently. They are just illusions anyway.
• Endeavor to see a project through to its finish before beginning another, but also be willing to set it aside if something more important comes up. It’s delightfully liberating to take on no more than one thing in a given moment.
• Painting your partner’s sailboat is just another way of saying “I love you.”

Happiness

Happiness is like the scent of acacia tree blossoms I pass on the morning run. It wafts in on a breeze, inspires a smile, and moves on. Can’t hold onto it, just enjoy when it passes my way.

Because it is the road out of town, I run along it in the morning. Because it is a road out of town, people throw trash along it. Because there is a wide spot to pull over at the top of the hill, there is a big collection of trash. Yard debris, carcasses, shattered TVs, part of a toilet, all manner of plastic bits, tires, household refuse with rotting food morsels. Because the local dogs are hungry, they gather here. This is their home. They sleep here. A matted, furry head pops up as I run past, and begins barking. Four other mangy dogs jump to their feet and limp away, barking. Almost all are lame in one way or another.

The road crests a hill and makes a curve, blinding drivers with the rising and setting sun. I run wary when I run in the morning, listening well, looking behind whenever cars or busses come head-on, and being ready to leap into the dried grass in a heartbeat. Watching there for toothy things that hiss.

Perception is a funny thing. The dogs live beside the road, and ignore the passing cars, which pose their biggest immediate threat to life. I come plodding along, not a threat, just something different, and they bark and run. Three of the poor bony creatures died on the road this week, casualties of the passing vehicles.

Isn’t it interesting how we, too, accept the familiar even though it may be hazardous, and resist the new and different just because it is.

There will always be choices of what to focus on. Happiness is the scent of acacia tree blossoms on the morning run.

Marina Seca

A boatyard is a unique community. Think of a boat as a home. Some are fixer-uppers, some are in good shape requiring only regular maintenance, and some are plush vacation homes, cared for by hirelings. Some are lifetime labors of love. Some are lived in while a renovation is done. Some are occasionally visited. The difference between houses and boats, is that a house is usually attached to a piece of ground, and that the people inspired to inhabit those homes are spread into their corners of the countryside. Boats, on the other hand, often congregate where the services are available when maintenance or renovation is required or a return from the vacation is due.

Marina Seca is a dirt lot in Sonora, Mexico next to the sea. A concrete wall and a chain link fence surround it. Intermittent electricity and water, even more intermittent internet, and a boat lift, are the amenities. Sunshine is more reliable than water or electricity, and almost every day is a painting day. The town of Guaymas is nearby with materials, San Carlos isn’t far with some marine goods, and the US is a day’s drive away for specialty items. Marina Seca attracts the do-it-yourselfers of the boat world.

Some breeze through in a day or two, haul up their boats, wash off the salt, scrape the barnacles, cover the windows, lock it up, and are gone to their other lives. For some it’s minor repairs and paint. Some cruisers stay for months and repair holes in a hull or change a mast or redesign a structure. Others have eddied out of the flow altogether and settled into their live-aboard projects, climbing ladders into their dry boats. Wood boats with rot, steel boats with rust, cement boats dissolving to bits. None will ever see even pennies per hour for the work they do. But daily they answer the call of some internal time clock.

It’s a forest of boats, with their accompanying stanchion-branches supporting them. Climbing the ladder to board adds to the feeling of living in a treehouse in a strange landscape.

At Marina Seca (dry marina) the boats may be dry, but their people certainly aren’t. In the afternoon shade of a hull stripped bare of paint, happy hour begins. The hardworking forest elves drink themselves giddy before retreating up their steps each to their own deck with a view over the wall, then down into the bellies of the boats to sleep.

After some weeks, this scene feels familiar. Just another community. Round-bellied tree houses feel like the norm. The glacial progress of projects becomes visible. Everyone has a story. They lack only to be written down, but somehow it’s appropriate that the stories, like the wind that bore them, blow away with the ending of each day.

These are the good old days. Living simple with a purpose. Talking of love, lifetimes, and dreams. Sailing Vessel Misty is our capsule to see the world, even if only in our imaginations for the moment. Meanwhile she gives our days structure as we ready her for long voyages, wherever they may be.

Kookaburra Laughs

Just settin’ myself down to a nice cuppa on a blustery Tassie afternoon. Cozy time to contemplate life and appreciate the shelter of friends.

Travel takes one outside of oneself, and offers moments of clarity. Sometimes a good book can do it, too. For me now, perhaps a little of both.

Three Cups of Tea, the tale of Greg Mortenson, climber turned school-builder in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is the most inspirational thing I think I’ve ever read. I’ve been devouring it on the flights, at times moved to tears I try to hide my tears from fellow passengers.

Lyn and Geoff, my hosts, greet me at the airport. Lyn bubbles about an orphanage in Cambodia she visited this year, and her conviction to help not only with her volunteer efforts while she was there, but also by organizing a fund-raising athletic event near Hobart. Her face is alight and her eyes sparkle with excitement.

“Spirit dwells in you, as you.” A line from in-flight movie Eat, Pray, Love. Live true to your heart and as fully as you can, and spirit will use your unique blend of talent and personality to do good things.

What is a Good Thing? Does it have to benefit 1,000 people? Save nature? Further human understanding? It may. Or perhaps it encourages one person. Lyn’s mother sits this week in hospital with her dying partner as he slips into unconsciousness, and beyond. Maybe in the Good Thing one is called to do, one’s own soul finds balance. One more instrument in the grand orchestra plays in harmony for a few bars.

I take Jed the old dog for a walk today. He lost his lifelong buddy recently and has since stayed very close to the humans in his life. He comes to me at the computer often for a reassuring scratch. The air is fresh in the damp bush through which the trail meanders. Kookaburra laughs from his perch in a gum tree.

Kayaking may be the pretext under which I’m here, but I’m convinced that the real reasons are much bigger, and unfathomable to me at the moment. It is my dedication to a passion—a recreational sport—that has brought me to this place. What an unlikely vehicle. I am inexpressibly humbled. I believe that if one follows one’s deep passion with dedication and honesty, it will be a spiritually rewarding journey. The kayak is just a tool. Such a frivolous one, yet somehow it feels elemental to me.

Is the Good Thing the project itself (kayaking lifestyle) or is the greater good the process of learning, submitting, being aware? Anything is possible. No matter what happens it’s ok.

Monsoon rains continue to wash away northern Australia, leaving heartbreaking stories in their wake. Grocery stores post flyers and take relief donations at the checkout counter. The national defense has been mobilized to help. Sometimes it’s hard to see any good in tragedy. Sometimes “No matter what happens it’s ok” sounds ridiculous and haughty.

On the small scale of our lives, strong Tasmanian easterlies (30-40kts) have flattened out the swell and threaten to blow kayakers to kingdom come. Our kayaking plans adjust daily, and yesterday we all stayed home. That means time for Axel and me to begin building a website for Lyn’s Cambodian Children’s Trust Challenge. Somehow, despite our plans, things fall into the places where they belong.

Bus ride back to Loreto

The movie is in English, the radio in Spanish, and the bus driver, whose gas pedal is connected to his mouth, is chatting away at 50mph through the Baja California night. I’ve given up listening to my Swedish language CD, and look out the window.

Peace and a crescent moon in the sunset. We are the moments of our lives, and this journey is sweet. I am headed back to Loreto from San Diego after coming north to run a brief kayaking class.

First the driver talks with the relief driver, who rides in a jumpseat that folds down in the stairway. At a stop, the relief driver crawls underneath by the luggage to sleep before his shift. The chatty driver begins talking with the woman in the other front seat, and invites her to the jumpseat. This is a great bonus for me for 3 reasons. One, I do not feel like talking, and she is happy to. Two, she is keeping the driver awake and connected to the gas pedal, and three, I have even more space to stretch out.

We stop for dinner at a bus stop café. Eighteen overworked pots share one stovetop and two women lift lids, stir, shuffle pots around, and wait for the wall of hungry faces to voice their desires.

“?Que hay?” someone asks.
A rosary of options is mumbled back. Bistek, machaca, deshebrada…

Somebody calls out an order, and one woman pokes at a pot with more purpose.

“Bistek” I say, figuring I’d end up with some form of cow on a plate.
The other cook looks at me, and stirs another pot. “?Plato o burrito?”

“Burrito,” I reply.
“?Cuantos?”
I look around to spy a tortilla so I’d have a clue what size she is selling, but don’t see any. “Dos,” I guess. If they are little, at least with two I won’t starve, and if they are big, maybe one will make a good breakfast.

I take my plate of two humble burritos and sit down at a little plastic table. After a moment another woman asks if she can join me, and I agree.

Good food, I say in Spanish.
Hunger makes anything good, she replies with a smile.
An older woman joins us. We exchange our stories in tiny verbal snapshots.

Sometimes when strangers get together, the truest of things get said. I’m not sure how, but here we sit, sharing a bus stop table, the elderly 2-time cancer survivor, the accident survivor, and me. Expressing our thanks for the tragedy-blessings that made us more aware of what a gift life is.

We climb back on the bus for the long haul, me 20 hours from Tijuana to Loreto, the viajita 22 hours home to Insurgentes, and the younger woman 26 hours to La Paz for work. I sit in the front seat of the bus, just behind the driver, and am the beneficiary of many smiles as people step or hobble their ways on board.

The fourth movie ends and still the chatty driver keeps the pace. I am wearing every stitch of clothing I brought and am still freezing. The driver’s chatting assistant has a blanket that I think he loaned her. After finally accepting that covering myself with my computer bag isn’t going to make me any warmer, I lean down to ask the assistant if she could inquire if there were any more blankets. Shortly the driver pulls off the road, opens the luggage compartment, and brings me a blanket. We resume the road. Extremely thankful, I drift off to sleep.

At a military checkpoint somewhere in the dark, two calico soldiers board and look about this capsule of traveling strangers. Seeing nothing noteworthy, they let us go on. Drivers switch, and the background of conversation ceases. The assistant curls to sleep on her seat. Mellow ranchero ballads follow the new driver down the road.

Sunrise brings a procession of cacti in gentle lighting that makes the austere look romantic. Distant mountains rotate in a waltz of perspective. The long slow drive through the desert drip-feeds my soul.

Driving south

From October, 2010
In El Rosario, white confetti blows everywhere. Onion skins from the harvest. In the borders of the great arroyo, through which the road also runs, white onions lie drying. Rows and rows of handsome white globes in the sun. Men walk down the rows, pulling them and setting them out. In a corner of one field, pink mesh bags slouch full of their pearly load.

Another field has 6” seedlings, which look beanish. A man hunches under the sun in a brown sweatshirt and a red hood, tending the seedlings with a short hoe. Perfect rows surround him with green stripes, a dozen between him and the far fence. Five dozen between him and the road. From him to the horizon, the green stripes extend endlessly as I drive, reducing this red-hooded gnome to futility in my mirror, which he defies by simply continuing.

Again tonight I listen to sounds of the sea. In Santa Rosalillita the ruin of an abandoned, unfinished Singlar marina slowly covers its shame in sand dunes. A perfect 12” wave peels across the entrance of the breakwater. This was to be the crux of the Escalara Nautica project, a scheme that would entice yachts to haul out here and drive across the peninsula and thereby shorten their time from the southern US to the Sea of Cortez. Rumor has it that the project was purchased by an Asian firm which will continue the development. Meanwhile, the osprey family enjoys their new blue and yellow nesting platform atop the unused yacht hauler. It’s the only thing left here with color. I think the scene would make a great end-of-the-world movie set. Be sure to capture the dead palms bending in the salt wind in front of the grey coastal fog.

Perspective increases with miles traveled from home. Scenes and memories pass easily through my mind as the landscape scrolls along. Books, friends. King of the Moon, a tender and profound account of rural life where there is a poverty of economy but a richness of human spirit. A friend’s ongoing health challenges. A couple of other friends passing on in recent months. How temporary is this situation called life! Somehow as the miles grow, priorities shift. Migration is a meditation on what is real and what is important.

To live consciously enough to follow inner callings. To live slowly enough to hear them. Open enough to share them. Why do I keep thinking this is just around the corner? What is now, is. Upon arriving somewhere, I get busy, and the dust of the immediate starts clouding the perspective. Not this time, I tell myself.

When I arrive to the beach I’ve called my winter home for 14 years, there is nothing about it that would indicate that I live here. It’s just a patch of sand and shrubbery.

I find a broken blue crate left by the fishermen, and sit on it beneath a quarter moon. And breathe. How simple and beautiful a moment can be. Life, I celebrate you! A cool mountain wind hugs me from behind. Ripples tickle the shore and make the only sound in a vast, calm silence.

I drop the truck’s tailgate and cook there. Then throw my sleeping bag on the beach and sleep. There will be other days for working. I resolve to keep the perspective I’ve found, do what I can each day, and leave the rest in peace.

A lizard rousts me from dreamland by running up my face. Its lightening fast, but I can still feel each gripping foot across my cheek. I rub the feeling of lizard feet away. The water is so calm that Orion throws three stripes on the surface. One for Rigel, the foot of the celestial hunter as he hooks it over Danzante Island and shimmies up into the sky. One for the belt, since the three stars are vertically aligned, and one for Betelgeuse, the shoulder.

I’m home.

The grace of learning

Like kayaking, martial art has a lot of great life lessons hidden in it.

The forward stroke and some basic martial art moves look simple. You can make one happen on your first try. To do them well, in a way that won’t hurt you in the long run, in a way that aligns bones and forces and realizes your full potential of power, takes time to master, and in the end there is no end; you can refine and improve as long as you’re willing.

I took a brief introduction to a movement-meditation art and found the exercises quite relaxing. But I also got a lot more out of the experience than just the exercises: some professional perspective as a coach, and some personal insight.

Learning takes humility.

Learning takes patience.

Learning can be uncomfortable.

To teach well you must learn from your student. It’s an interaction—observe, listen, process. Demonstration and talking are a small part of teaching.

To a learner, it is difficult to assimilate many corrections at once. Some can, but it’s generally better to give 1 or 2, and then encouragement and practice.

Stop your student immediately if something they’re doing is going in the wrong direction. Better to change the exercise than allow damaging practice.

Tradition in teaching, and even bureaucracy has its reasons, but there is also a place for exceptions, and experimenting.

Power comes from alignment. It’s more about awareness than muscle.

Life is an experience of the spirit. The body is just a vehicle for the trip and a tool for learning awareness.

Rock and spirit

The weighty, slow transience of rocks. The airy permanence of spirit.

A gull preens on the waves in front of camp. Bobs, dips, shakes. Wades shoreward to stand in knee deep breakers on yellow pencil legs. Its triangle feet fold with each step as it walks to a standing place, face into the wind.

A hole in the busy-ness. Not a lack of things on the never-ending list, but something I’ve dug for myself today. How shallow it seems for all the “have to do” I’ve piled around it. Of course they are all choices.

This morning whitecaps tumble by 100yds offshore, but don’t come in. Not a leaf trembles in the mangle dulce bushes. Castle mountains rise almost vertical in the west, reaching for a setting, waning moon. Cold night air pours down their striped and fluted walls, meets the incoming wind, and holds it off the beach. They hold each other in a tender sunrise balance broken finally by the warmth of the sun. Breezes sputter to the shore and start to play with my camp things. I sit and watch it happen.

Another morning I launch alone just before 6am. The crescent moon rises fuzzy behind eastern clouds. Arcturus, Spika, and Antares disappear behind a veil. Bioluminescence glows in my bow wake and around each paddle stroke. Sometimes the blade of my Greenland stick comes out of the water entirely glowing. I hear a big splash behind me and a snort; a sea lion follows for a few minutes.

Clouds have a hint of light behind them as I pass the southern end of Danzante Island about 7am. A small ray leaps out of the water as if to check on the progress of sunrise. Pelicans cover Submarine Rock and somebody fishes out of a skiff nearby as I head out for Carmen Island. There is no wind and only the most subtle swell. Below clouds, Isla Santa Cruz is clear on the distant horizon. A far boat trails black smoke as it passes between Monserrate and Santa Catalina Islands.

Somehow the names are a comfort. I know where I am because I know what the map says that island is. I have a place in the universe because I know what other people call that star. Blue footed boobies and brown boobies in groups of 2 or 3, circle overhead before moving along. Trying to figure out a name for me, this funny yellow island with the windmill in the middle. But they probably don’t need names to feel at home.

I take a 15 minute break on Punta Baja, scolded by two pairs of yellow legged gulls, then push off for the northern tip of Danzante Island. A kayak group awakes to breakfast on park beach CN27, put I pass far offshore. A light breeze ripples the water. The sun never really rose; it slipped unnoticed over the horizon and is walking about wearing clouds today. Despite a slight NW breeze, an opposing current pushes me gently into it, and I drift north.
Around the northern tip of Danzante, rafts of little grebes float together. Another small ray leaps. This kind is called a mobula. Thousands of them flock together just below the surface around the whole NW end of the island and into Honeymoon Cove. I drift and watch them flap slowly. An undulating carpet. Wingtips break the surface here and there.

Like little peeks into a dimension where it all becomes clear. Like I sit in the shade of a mesquite, squinting at my computer screen, wondering which is the purpose of what, or if it’s all just about being present wherever now happens to be. How to stay in that mindset and run a kayak company, or any other endeavor that requires forethought?

It’s all a matter of perspective, really. Again I slide towards the eastern horizon which is still as dark as the whole circle of sky. The Mountain Man is hard to discern this morning. He’s a cartoonish character with his round head tilted back, a bulbous nose, and a wide open mouth. He aligns with Bird Poop Rock when I’m halfway to the southern tip of Danzante Island. Today Bird Poop Rock is more of a looming feeling than a visual clue. A low bright star east of Crux slides along the southern horizon as I paddle. Nearer and nearer to the Mountain Man comes the star.

“I’ll feed you a star,” I proclaim.

“AHHHHH,” he replies

I paddle faster until the star aligns with his open mouth. It all feels so close in the darkness. The Mountain Man is family. The star could be the song just sung, lingering as a perfect point of light. It could be a golden-red apple ready to fall into the maw.

“Eat it!” I say. Nothing. The star slides onward. “Get it! Gulp it!”

Mountain Man yawns passively at the sky as the star slides up his nose.