We Crossed an Ocean

We crossed an ocean. It really just hit me today. Misty’s sails are down and folded under a tarp on the deck. We’re motoring towards the ramp where we’ll take her out of the water tomorrow.

We’re headed into the wind and little whitecaps, but if I look back, the sea appears calm. The backs of waves always look smoother than their faces. So it is with journeys.

Each moment is just a moment, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing. Just one day you look back and you’ve crossed an ocean. Moments of tension or struggle flatten as they recede into the broader story.

Was I really there? There’s an unreality to it. But it’s a valid question. WAS I really there—in each moment, present? Am I really here? Is contemplation a removal or a deepening? If I were truly, deeply here, would I be writing about it, or just breathing it?

Short sleeves in the afternoon sun. Glint off Misty’s bare boom. Wind in our faces. New Zealand flag whips its tattered end in a sky only 2 shades a lighter blue. Motor growls deeply. “Mutiny” the dinghy bounces in our wake. White sails tilt across the horizon near and far. Two people fish from a tiny motor boat as it bounces radically in the waves. Forested hills and bright grassy slopes pass slowly. Paihia. Russell. Whatiangi .The birthplace of English-speaking New Zealand.

Cape Brett and Cape Wiwiki lie hazy in the distance. This is the bay we entered after crossing from Tonga. It was a clean slate then. Now it’s crisscrossed with memories like the tracks on our GPS.

We crossed an ocean. It’s an emotional realization.

At the same time, we built a relationship. Hands down, the harder of the two. At least in crossing, you know what direction you ought to go most of the time, and you have a map, a GPS, or a nautical chart. Still, each moment is only a moment, just the same. Only looking back do you see the sum of what you’ve built, and hold it even closer to the heart.

There’s something profound in what it means to have a boat. Something about freedom, and the cost of exercising that freedom. It’s not a fancy freedom, but it did get us from one continent to another.

It’s a different dimension, living on the sea. A calendar with elements of wind, tide, climate, and swell, and less attention to hours, minutes, and appointments. It’s perspective. Seeing the land as little green punctuations in a vast watery openness, instead of seeing the sea as a fringe of blue between the beach and the horizon. Living at the mercy of the weather, even on anchor and in the middle of the night.

I take a final dive in for a bath at sunset in Kerikeri Inlet. El Condor Pasa plays on the stereo, on flute and native instruments, nostalgic in the fading light. The New Zealand waters test one’s resolve for bathing, to be sure. Henrick is loosening the rigging for tomorrow’s haul-out and removal of the mast. He says he feels sad, too. The end of a year of travel together, and a journey we’ve been preparing pretty much since we met almost 4 years ago. We will depart separately for who knows how long or where we’ll next see each other. If I think about it I can’t keep from crying.

“Goodbye My Lover” sings James Blunt. Little things to do for tomorrow. Dinner. They keep me sane right now.

End of a trip. End of our year. Like the end of anything, a life. What did we do with it? Took our floating home across an ocean. How does that fit into the big picture of anything? Only Time has the clues.

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.

Everything Matters - Loreto Kayak Symposium

Loreto Kayak Symposium 2011

In December ended the long series that started in October as the Loreto Kayak Symposium on the Baja California peninsula in Mexico.

The classes happening here are simple, yet of tremendous importance. Loreto is on the cusp of government sponsored mega-development on the scale of Cancun and Los Cabos. These kayaking events provide tools, inspiration, and voice for sustainability in development, from both ecological and economic standpoints.

Symposium events
Symposium festivities were enhanced by competition prizes donated by Kokatat , Werner, NRS, Seals , and Cascade Designs. Appreciative winners of the solo kids’ race, the kids & parents race, an obstacle course, and a long distance race, took home top quality gear to inspire their continued paddling and camping experiences. Thanks to our sponsors!

At a weekend beach festival in October, university students offered short presentations on the beach. Parts of the kayak, safety equipment, etc. Abraham Levy , a Mexican who paddled the entire coastline of Mexico, gave a rousing presentation at the university. British Canoe Union courses carried on for the next week and a half, and brought participants from Venezuela, Canada, and Australia as well as Mexico.

For logistical and economic reasons, a 21-day Expedition Challenge from Mulege to Loreto, was sandwiched into the event. Paddlers hailed from Sweden, Australia, Georgia, California, and Washington state.

In the past two years of Loreto Kayak Symposium, years of prior classes crystallized into some real progress. In October 2010, three Mexicans became certified as BCU coaches— Ivette Granados , Santiago Berrueta , and Yuriria Hernandez (and 1 Canadian Leah Blok who works in Baja). Since then, one more Mexican, Oscar Manguy has become a Coach 1, Santiago has trained for Coach 2, and both Oscar and his wife Yuriria Hernandez have trained for their 4-star Sea Leadership awards. Santiago already has this leadership award, making him the first and so far only Mexican to hold this challenging certification.

The series ended in early December with a simple class of great significance: mentoring the first generation of British-certified Mexican coaches as they train the university interns who will likely become the future guides and owners.

Loreto’s Romance with Tourism
Tourism can be nearly as destructive as an extraction-based economy. Or it can give an economic value to plants, creatures and intact ecosystems and inspire their care. The conversation of sustainability is alive and well in Loreto, with such players as the National Marine Park of Loreto , the Eco-Alliance of Loreto , Rare Conservation, the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas, Center for Civic Collaboration, Antares Ecological Group, Community and Biodiversity. They have a tough challenge in the face of the government-sponsored luxury-minded development plans Fonatur.

Yet there is hope and momentum. UNESCO declared the Sea of Cortez and all its islands a World Heritage Site in 2005 . This international recognition parallels a local cultural awakening to the unique marine treasure that the people of Baja California live on.

Extraction and Outfitting
Historically, Baja natives hunted and gathered for their survival. Pearl oysters were “discovered” by explorers and gathered to extinction. Shark fisheries began for export and severely depleted the shark population of the Sea. Small planes brought sport fishermen. Roads opened up opportunities for more commercial fisheries. For generations, the sea has been the bottomless bank account of Baja California. Anyone with a little initiative could dip in and extract a living.

In the 1960s Tim Means started bringing tourists south of the border and founded Baja Expeditions . Later, Trudi Angel founded Paddling South in Loreto. In less extractive ways outfitters were dipping into the Sea of Cortez for their livelihoods as well. In the 1990s the National Marine Park of Loreto was finding its feet, and several outfitting companies were operating in the Loreto area. Mexican immigration was also pushing for outfitters to hire more locals, trying to tap into adventure travel for local economic sustainability.

On the premise that fishermen know the sea and that young people are trainable and will work for less money, my employer recruited teenage fishermen’s sons. This was my fourth year guiding in Baja, and my boss asked if I would train our newly hired Mexican staff. They spoke just a few words of English.

Kayak Training
Teaching kayaking in a foreign language is a great way to learn that language. Conjugate lessons into full sentences. Instant feedback. Eager students are keen to help with the communication. Teaching kayaking in a foreign language is also great for developing coaching skills. It keeps the talk to action ratio low on the talking end.

In 2007, when Ivette Granados and I started Sea Kayak Baja Mexico , one of the major contributions she brought to the team was her connection with the universities of Baja California Sur (the southern state of Baja). She understood that ours was not to be just another tour company, but an educational center.

I believe that for knowledge or skill to be meaningful in the long run, the power of it must be given to local hands. Train the teachers. Support the leaders. Encourage the future mentors. Someday when my time in Baja is done, I would love to see a network of kayak coaches and university professors able to develop their own guides to a skill level appropriate to the areas in which they’re leading, and certify them with internationally respected credentials. In my own small way, I see that as contributing to the strength of Loreto as a sustainably-managed eco-destination.

Nowadays many Mexican guides are hired as fresh university grads in related fields of science such as Marine Biology or Alternative Tourism. They speak good English. They know how to apply themselves. They understand the uniqueness of the Sea of Cortez.

The importance of training and credentials is understood by these graduates. It is not lost either on their employers as they advertise their staff and services, or demonstrate to their insurance company how they’re managing risk through training and prevention.

The Municipality of Loreto in 2010 also saw the value of professional training in kayaking. Seeking to build the town as a world-class guide training destination to match its renowned paddling location, they offered to sponsor the costly British flights and coach fees, and bridge the gap between the cost of running the courses and the $18/person the students could afford. Due to an impressive level of corruption in that administration, the local government went so bankrupt that they couldn’t fund the special ed school bus or the city’s utility bill for several months. Kayaking fell off the budget long before a single peso went towards it.

Changing Perceptions
Loreto is in the process of re-creating its cultural perception of the sea. This is happening from many fronts at once: school children, university students, administration. In the mid-1990s some farsighted residents noted the increasing population and tourism were stretching the resources of the sea. Having seen the collapse of other fisheries on Mainland Mexico, these organizers began petitioning the Mexican federal government for a tool to manage their natural resources sustainable for the long haul. In 1996, nine years before the UNESCO declaration, the National Marine Park of the Bay of Loreto was created as a result of local residents’ efforts. The marine park encompasses 2,065 square kilometers of sea including 5 islands and numerous sea stacks.

Trawling and bottom dragging were prohibited. Limits were instated on fishing and shellfish harvesting. Island tourism regulated. For better or worse, the free-for-all was curbed.

Fernando Arcas, one of the original petitioners, continues to research wildlife behavior and population in the park. He heads GEA (Grupo Ecologista Antares) (info) and (tours). Fernando is joined by secretary Maria Elena and educator Luis. They publish pamphlets and occasionally insert them into the local paper. Sea Turtles—how to let them nest undisturbed. Sharks—why they’re important to the health of the sea. Blue whales—gentle giants who are our neighbors.

They take elementary school kids to the waterfront. Get them excited about the treasure that lies just beyond the sandy beach of their hometown. To these presentations Ivette brings a big sit-on-top kayak and some PFDs. She talks about boating safety and fun. Kids practice putting on the life jackets and helping each other tighten them well. They see how many can sit in one kayak together on the sand, and talk about the animals they might see.

In the summer, Ivette gathers 2-3 enthusiastic university interns and runs a kayak day camp for kids at Hotel Desert Inn, a beach-front resort with a pool. The kids swim, play games with sit-on-top kayaks and learn kayak basics in a spirited format that has 4-year olds and 12-year olds all working together. This is common in the local culture and feeds well into the awareness of others that is so important in kayaking.

In a culture where the sea has largely been the resource bank for extraction, showing youngsters its intrinsic value and a method for low impact access is a significant step for the future. It may even afford a few of them a good living showing it to visitors someday.

Life Skills for the Future
University interns do 100 hours of community service to pay back their education. Beyond helping at summer camp and the symposium, our interns also learn to run the store and put out rentals. Accounting, retail, customer service, English. The dream of many of these students is to either be a guide, which pays well locally, or to run their own company. Rural Baja is mostly free of franchises and chains, so family owned businesses are common.

Interns in the university’s Alternative Tourism track must create a project as part of their studies. Something to bring value to their community.

Ramon is one of our interns. His family owns an orchard/ranch in the village of San Isidro, west of Loreto. San Isidro is a mountain oasis with freshwater lagoons formed by springs. The family raise sugar cane as their primary cash crop, forming it into the familiar brown sugar cones sold in fruiterias and mercados in town, and they engage in typical subsistence ranching. Hurricane Jimena wiped out most of their plantation, and they have been looking for a way to recover.

Working with his parents and his uncle, Ramon is planning an oasis eco-tour project: paddle the half-mile long lagoons and enjoy palms, turtles, birds, and interesting geology. Marine fossils are layered in the mountain rocks. The iconic El Pilon peak is an eroded red-brown cone lending its name to the cone-shaped brown sugar “piloncillo” that was the family’s cash product. In the eco-tour plan, Ramon envisions giving visitors hands-on experience pressing sugar, or milking goats, or working with leather as his family treats them to genuine ranch hospitality.

Daniel’s family owns a purified water store in Loreto. His eco-tour route explores the mangroves in a protected estuary near Loreto. Mangroves are the ocean’s nurseries, home to juvenile fish, oysters, and a host of birds from snowy egrets to osprey to brown pelicans.

To put it in prospectve, John Steinbeck, in The Log from the Sea of Cortez in 1941 wrote, “And if we seem a small factor in a huge pattern, nevertheless it is of relative importance… none of it is important, or all of it is.”

Many thanks to the sponsors who have supported the Loreto Kayak Symposium. Far beyond providing equipment, you have supplied momentum, belief, incentive, and encouragement. It is greatly appreciated!

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.

Migration

LoCo Roundup 2011 was a great success! (http://www.locoroundup.com) We put on 17 BCU courses, a Greenland paddle carving course, and several general courses ranging from an hour to 3 days each. The event actually made money for the first time in 5 years, something believed to be impossible for a strictly instructional symposium to do. Many, many thanks to all who were part of it! Still, it WAS the last LoCo. It’s time for new adventures!

October 1, Henrick and I loaded my new ’93 Ford F150 to the gills, kissed the farm goodbye, and made tracks towards the Mexican border.

The next morning we paused for a brief stop in Portland so I could Row for the Cure in a tandem kayak with Laura Jackson. Oh, it felt good to reach out and power that hull through the water with another likeminded gal! And to do it for a good cause. As a 5-year breast cancer survivor, I am thankful for the tremendous efforts of others in raising money and awareness towards a cure. For me, cancer was a small chapter whose pages turned long ago. That’s how it feels now, with much gratitude, and life rolls joyously onward. Even more joyously now with the perspective that chapter brings.

I am on my 15th annual migration to Baja to coach, guide, and just be, on a little strip of beach between the mountains and the sea. Sea Kayak Baja Mexico, LLC my humble venture, is the child of passion and ignorance, delivered without the midwife of business sense. That it ever got off the ground is a testament to luck, a few hardy clients, and my Mexican business partner Ivette Granados.

The fate of beach where I live outside of Loreto is in limbo—saved from luxury development more than once by fallen economies. My residence there is never guaranteed.

But I have no monopoly on uncertainty. Unplanned adventure seems to apply to all aspects of life. Relationship, family, career, financial investment, creativity, vacations, and particularly journeys. It is a truth that applies so well to journeys, in fact, that they are metaphors for all the rest.

A friend who was experienced in Baja travels once advised not to bring anything to Mexico that I wouldn’t mind parting with. Before my first Baja trip 15 years ago I read Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing. It prepared me well for crossing with the expectation of losing everything, from possessions, to identity, to belief systems, in an almost religious purging. Still I went. Still, 15 years later, I return, more invested than ever.

Sometimes the frustration of holding back outweighs the fear of going forward, and you just go for it. What do you have to lose but everything? And once you lose everything, you’re just left with you and your spirit. Which is all you ever started with. And so you can again. Not that I won’t fight tooth and nail to hold on, and complain a bit. In the end you can’t take it with you anyway. Life is then the sum of our experiences, not our possessions. And we are spirit, not a list of accomplishments.

Which leads us to the next phase. I have been trying to find the balance between running a kayaking venture in WA state, one in Mexico, an annual event, and a farm. Balancing too much is a great circus trick, but not how I want to keep living. Some things had to be trimmed back. Then I met Henrick, and added a relationship and a shared life of adventure travel. I often do things a bit backwards.

For the last 2 years, I’ve been working with business partners to develop our companies in a direction to run with less of me around. I’ve spent some time working with Henrick preparing his sailboat Misty for voyage.

In 2012, I hope to make a leap in priorities from scheduling myself primarily around my kayaking projects to building an “us” and creating some exciting history together.

I’ve never held down a real job, indoors with regular pay, for an entire year. Never in my life. Guiding and teaching has held my attention for 15 years, and been immensely rewarding. There are still aspects I treasure: Coaching people and watching them develop. The synergy of working with other coaches and business partners. Certain exhilarating and meditative paddle trips. The connection with the outdoors, the stars, the plants, the wind.

Now I have met someone with whom I feel a deep kinship, and it seems our lives could blend nicely. On we go, now seeking the balance between relationship, personal rewards of creative work projects, and financial responsibilities. First stop for me is the Second Annual Loreto Kayak Symposium, and for Henrick, the Joy of Boatwork.

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.

Sunrise is a Sandwich

Sunrise is a sandwich.
Blue. Orange. Blue.
Hot orange on a hard blue line

Horizon is an illusion.
Corners of islands float in the fiery sky, not touching the sea.
Horizon is a place you can never touch.
Its flatness undulates with waves.

Black constants on a changing palette--
islands on the horizon.
Sure of themselves.

Sunrise is how I love you this morning.
The passion of opposite colors pressing together
and running for a long time
past solid black milestones.

Beyond the illusion
that holds sea and sky together,
they reflect each other.
Sky cools upwards to blue.
Sea softens near shore to a peachy glow.

Fragments of the beach take flight and wing their ways across
sea and sky
orange and blue
illusion and conviction.
And sunrise is just a transition.

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.

Redefining the goal

(from Aug 30 2010)

Ten slivers of rainbow push their pointy noses around the metal sea wall of Astoria’s East Mooring Basin. Their vista opens to include a broad waterscape hemmed by distant blue hills and dotted with black-hulled freighters. The Astoria Megler bridge, like a yoga pose, arches its green-spined back high over the shipping channel and stretches its arms long and low across the water to Washington, four miles distant.

A 14-mile journey lies ahead, some anxiety within. Destination, the Pacific, like Lewis & Clark. The empty kayak trailer waits at the mouth of the mighty Columbia River.

Of our ten, four are BCU 4-star sea leader candidates being tested on their leadership, navigation and personal skills on an exposed journey. Four more are moderate to well skilled sea paddlers being led on the journey, and two are assessors charged with exposing the group to that turbulent and exciting current of challenge where learning happens and where the candidates can demonstrate their skills or reveal their weaknesses.

Winds are force 2 from the NW as the colorful arrows begin to glide across the channel in close formation. The water’s surface is lightly textured. A 2.4 knot ebb whisks them past green buoy 39 towards the bridge.

From the low vista of the kayakers’ eyes, the mid-river sand bars are not apparent at first except as a perforation of gulls along the horizon. Gulls a fraction taller than they would be if they were floating. Desdemona sands make a fine lunch break beside the bridge and the cross current of traffic, something I’ve long wanted to do. Drivers honk and wave.

Distance paddled: 3nm. Time: 1 hour. Speed made good: 3 knots. Three more hours till slack. Headwinds begin to touch force 3, cresting occasional wavelets.

It is apparent to two candidates that our remaining 11-mile journey is not likely to happen. Another says that we should push to make 4 knots.

Sometimes the drama comes from our own stubbornness. Sometimes one must experience to understand. It is the job of the assessor to let this experience happen without losing the larger safety net.

Bridge drivers look down now to see the smears of color getting washed by 2-3’ waves. They bounce in the spray but make little headway along the bridge or towards the destination. Does the candidate in the lead recognize this yet? Is he thinking of other options? The wind builds, the ebb slowly dies. The treadmill goes on, steepening wind waves to 4’.

Who is the paddler making many sweep strokes on the downwind side, working hard to maintain direction, and losing speed? How long can she keep this up? Who are the resources; the strong one trying to pull ahead? Who is strong and aware, able to pull ahead but staying back for group support? Do the candidates read this? How do they use their resources to meet the challenges?

When do we redefine the goal?

Kayaking is not just a scenic escape. It is a teacher of life lessons. I suppose this is why, for some, immersing in the natural world is a fundamental element of spirit.

A change of candidates in the lead, an inline tow, a small change of course. Finally, the exercising of some fine hitchhiking skills. The journey is behind us, and within, on our written or unwritten log books of life.

Where beauty resides

I think the Dog Beach ebb current on Friday afternoon helped to pull of the stunt I’m trying to repeat now without success. I’m in the surf off Mission Beach, in a small gap between surfers. Mission Beach waves are much stronger than Dog Beach waves. I’m getting body blasted and side-surfed back to the beach instead of the graceful, dynamic, and perhaps lucky maneuver of two days ago. Mike stands behind a long camera lens on the beach hoping for some photogenic carnage.

Image: a green wall of water rises behind the kayak, about to break, completely obscuring the sky. At full velocity I try to punch through it and get surfed backwards and broached. Again. I wash up on the seaweed at Mike’s feet and suggest we try back at Dog Beach, which had looked too small earlier. I’m willing to take a little less manhandling by the surf.

On the drive over we pass clusters of red-clad walkers. Walking for MS.

“People are walking for everything these days,” says Mike. “The Walk for the Cure for breast cancer came through my neighborhood all dressed in pink. Some costumes. Guys with stuffed shirts that read Save the Boobs. It’s a 3-day event, huge! Survivors, people with family and friends affected, people who just care. There were literally thousands of walkers.”

We get on the topic of hope and post-surgery decisions. “A friend of mine had reconstruction and tattoos of Hawaiian flowers on hers,” I say. “Some reporter interviewed her for a recent article.” Tattoos are an appropriate topic when driving through Ocean Beach, where at the grocery co-op the other day I believe I was the only one of any age without body art.

Mike has worked in newspapers and photography. He mentioned a photo essay a colleague did on survivors with tastefully done shots of scars and reconstruction. A celebration of life and deeper beauty. I related a comment my dad made when I announced 4 years ago that I did not want reconstruction after my mastectomy. My dad is one of the people I respect most on this planet for his faith and his constant search for deeper meaning. With uncharacteristic anxiety, he asked how I would still be beautiful for some guy. I was too surprised to really answer. No doubt he was just expressing his concern for my well-being. I stuck with my choice and am glad for it. Mobility and overall health were my priorities. I just wanted to be able to paddle, coach, and live as fully as possible. Besides, if some guy with whom I’m building a relationship is concerned about a big scar and the lack of one boob, I don’t want to be with that guy. As it turns out, my man isn’t phased at all. Deeper things hold us together, despite being on opposite sides of the planet most of the time.

My photographer for the morning, meanwhile, helps me carry my pale green kayak through swirls of happy dogs. I find another gap between the surfers off Dog Beach, and play in the gentler waves. The morning tide is flooding still, and the waves don’t have the right shape for my stunt, so I ride a couple frontwards just for fun. Finally I park myself in front of a bigger set and give it all I have left.

The green wall rises up before me. I paddle backwards, turning to check one more time for anyone behind me. Up comes the bow. I lean forward then forcefully come back to center and yes! The stern sticks, the bow swings around in the foam. I brace on the left and swing my hips, turning the brace into a forward stroke as I come out on top of the foam pile, far enough forward that a little push and a forward lean sends my boat down over it. Whoo-hooo the drop! I watch the bow puncture the green water just in front of the wave and go deep. Not part of the plan, but it’ll make some photogenic carnage, I think, as I tuck my head for the flip. I roll up grinning, and go back energized to try again.

On the next set wave, it feels right. All clear behind, green swell rising before. Timing, momentum in reverse, weight shift to stick the stern. Which way will she turn? I listen with my body… then brace on the left as my playful Romany spins on her tail. A little propulsion, and I ride down the foam pile to surf perfectly towards the beach. Big grin! Joy from deep inside. Satisfaction beyond reason for simply having pulled off a surf stunt, and I can’t wipe the smile off my face. We carry the kayak back to the car and Mike is grinning too.

The shots he got, my flip, his excitement. “Yeah, action, carnage, go!” As an afterthought, “I hope she’s ok.”
He continues, referring to our earlier conversation, “I have a response for your dad.”
“Yeah?”
“One Ginni Callahan smile is worth 2 boobs any day!”
I like it.

That’s a universal truth, really. Joy from deep inside is where real beauty resides. No matter what the turbulence around us, if we look deep enough, there is always something to be joyful for, even if it is mere breath, or a memory.

from my garden to your computer screen

Writing while eating dinner. It’s one way of sharing a meal.

So here goes. Mashed red potatoes from my garden. Nice and peppery. Served on an orange plate with white polka-dots from my friend Diana. Slaw with all kinds of vegetable matter—cabbage, 4 different colors of carrot (red, orange, yellow, and white), green onions, celery and parlsey. All from that good ol’ garden, except for the light balsamic vinaigrette dressing. And to top it off, 2 lamb chops the tenderest you can imagine, raised just down the road at Greyfields Farm, and cooked up with garlic and rosemary from guess where? I love my garden! I pulled it all out this week so I could cover it with tarps and leave for Mexico. Otherwise there won’t be a garden when I come back in June, just Very Tall Weeds.

Meanwhile the Raspberries are in overdrive (almost a gallon this evening!). They are determined to see that I get my garden time each day despite having ripped out everything rippable and trying to focus on packing to leave. Just try to rip out determined raspberries! They are related to blackberries, after all. They have the same last name. I bet if I didn’t dig back their imperialist roots and cover the shredded ground with metal roofing or heavy tarps with cinder blocks on them, within 2 years they would have my whole 50’x100’ garden in their prickly grasp. But their plump heavy berries are a joy, and delicious. I think they are trying to tell me that they will miss me.

To do a few things and do them well. To take good care of the things I do have, whether it’s a tool or a garden or a motor vehicle (they may not look like much, but both the car and the truck have over 200,000 miles on them and still run well most of the time). This is one of the tenets of my deepest beliefs. To take care of and appreciate what one does have. What happens when the projects pile up, all worthy, but just not enough time or energy in one human to give them all the quality time they deserve? Well, I suppose one downsizes or one goes insane. Talking to raspberries, does that qualify as insane yet?

Dismantling a Centipede

I returned from a 10-day Carmen Island Circumnavigation to find a 6-inch centipede sunbathing on the dirt of my campsite. Closer inspection revealed it to actually be quite dead. Each plump amber segment had its own pair of blonde legs. A set of ferocious mahogany mandibles folded under the head. A file of miniscule cider-colored ants hustled to and from its body. I let nature take her course and just watched over the next couple of days, stepping around the scene whenever I went to the water tank.

Slowly the ants began deflating the centipede. Segments at the tail end lost their plump roundness, then turned transparently hollow, then broke off one by one and drifted away in the breeze. After three days, the ants still marched on the front half, climbing through the exoskeleton like a jungle-gym. Even the legs became hollow tubes.

I know it’s cliché, but it still amazes me what a focused and united effort of itty bitty critters can accomplish: dismantling a centipede several hundred times their size. Are they consuming it as they go? Do they have a pantry in their basement under my camp especially for centipede jerky?

Their industry and effectiveness reminds me of the best moments of our recent kayak trip. Working together in teams of 4 to move a loaded kayak to the water, two pairs each sharing a strap. Or the synchronized way we packed, sometimes on a moment’s notice to take advantage of a weather window. Somehow we managed to be ready all 10 of us at the same time. Somebody was paying attention to the bigger picture, picking up the little pieces, offering a hand to somebody who was struggling, filling water bottles for all if they were ahead. Good attitudes, good chemistry, aware people. What magic!

I wonder if the ants ever have a discombobulated day, or a few mutinous individuals? Do they have a sense of humor and joke together as they work? Give antennae high-fives as they pass, moving too fast for the human eye to really follow?

After a week, the centipede segments have dispersed, probably lodging under bushes with the dry leaves. The ants still commute their meandering highways through camp, and I’m about to organize another group of kayakers. The wind carries on.

Into Baja!

Oct 15. Rancho Santa Inez, Cataviña, Baja!

We started this morning under a crescent moon and Venus in the dawning sky. Crossed the border at Tecate mostly uneventfully (only lost one small piece off my trailer and lost John once, but he circled back).

I worried a lot today, about the truck, our progress, our safety on the road… then stopped to remind myself that worrying doesn’t help anything. Enjoy the ride. Take what comes. It will be OK.

The music, the passing hills and plants-- cirio, agave, cholla, cardon cacti, all old friends. The act of driving all day. The delicious solitude of driving alone in my truck with thoughts, memories, feelings all my own.

The warm glow of late evening painted itself on the curious round boulders of the Cataviña landscape as we drove south this evening. Tan boulders high as a cardon’s belly button. Rosy mountains to the east. The shadow of my truck with its kayak top hat and trailer drove through boulders and cacti like a ghost.

I set out my sleeping bag under a spectacular ceiling of stars. Not just individual stars, but the swath of Milky Way, clear as a trail in the wilderness. A trail with distinct puddles of galactic light to skip through.

A couple days ago we did the importation dance. This is necessary to use kayaks for business in Mexico. We crossed the equipment into Mexico through an import broker, met the gear there and got the all-important green documents with which we can bring the kayaks in & out of the country. We hauled them back to the US to load our personal gear, and would resume migration the next morning. As we waited in line to cross back to the US, three cameras in each lane studied drivers from various angles. John explained how biometric technology recognizes points of people’s faces—tip of nose, cheek bones, other unchangeables. Here in Baja, the points are light. The points of a friend’s face. Cassiopia. Cygnus. Delphinus. Recognition, and the warmth it kindles.

I migrate for work. I can make a better winter living as a Baja guide than I can in WA. I migrate for sun. Solar heating. I migrate for Baja. Its landscape, starscape, seas; its people; the energy of the place. I migrate back for trees, the garden, the community of farmers paddlers and friends, and summer work.

All manner of insects are attracted to my headlamp. An iridescent moth lands on my pen and rides for a few words. An orange termite-creature squeaks every time it crash-lands on the paper, my hand, the sand, my face. It whines pathetically when I hold it still to see it better.

For the first time in over a week, I am not sleeping between kayaks at Aqua Adventures, however pleasant that was. I am sleeping between a trailer full of kayaks and a mesquite tree under the stars, to a chorus of crickets, the flatulence of distant truck brakes, and the sound of some large ungulate chewing and digesting indiscreetly in the nearby shrubbery.

Lights come on in the house of the ranching family who runs the campground. John rustles in the tent on the other side of the truck. It’s time to move again. I hold the naked morning to me for one last snuggle, then get up to pack my sleeping bag.

Oct 16.
Landscape from San Ignacio down has been incredibly green! I crested a rise in the road to catch a glimpse of a hand walking across the pavement. No, it was too hairy. A tarantula, silhouetted for a moment against the sky, legs outstretched in an inspired gallop. How had it just missed the 18-wheeler coming the other direction? I straddled it with my tires and sent it a wish to miss John’s tires behind me.

Tarantulas migrate. Follow some irrepressible calling to move in a direction despite perils. Do they ever weigh the relative merits of just staying home this year? Or is it then no longer home if you belong in another place at that time? Does some inner voice just say Move and they do? Does a tarantula pontificate on the risks of travel? Can the chunky little arachnid hear the soundtrack of freedom as it struts through an ever-changing landscape? Does its heart sing as it passes a familiar landmark? Should we consider it lucky, brave, or ignorant as it sets out on its journey? Do I follow a voice any different from that spider, or a gray whale, or an elegant tern?

Migration is a temporary unleashing of the creative mind and heart from the daily duties of running a kayak company, a farm, and a symposium. Those are creative, too, but in a more structured way. My only mandate now is to go south. Be open to the journey. Open the senses. Open the heart. Breathe. Some people take vacations. I migrate.

South of Loreto. Home beach. Sound of wavelets, crickets. Starlight reflecting on water. Bulk of mountains, dark on dark. Comforting and familiar are the bumps and dips on the rough dirt road to get here, augmented by the recent hurricane. New and obnoxious - the glow from Ensenada Blanca development. Comforting and familiar - faithful plants waiting exactly where they were last spring. Reassuring - the lack of any improvement right here on this beach.

How lucky and precious and rare to find this on the shore of anywhere, let alone in the perfect kayak training ground. In So Cal I couldn’t find a parking spot anywhere near the sea to go swimming. Here in “my” spot I can’t find a trace of humanity other than a few rocks I moved to surround some young lomboy plants last winter and the makeshift paddle varnishing rack I found nailed to the mesquite tree, utilized and left.

It’s good to be home again.

Lucky 13, or “It’s not always the adventure we planned on.”

On October 6, 2009, Ol’ Blue my trusty pickup truck, turns 200,000 miles on a CA highway en route to Mexico. Within 300 miles, it breaks down in a rest area 45 miles north of San Diego.

Although this is trip #13 to Baja, this situation is not as unlucky as it sounds. Quite fortunate, really. The rest area where we broke down was ocean front with palm trees. Some people pay lots of money to hang out in such a place! Plus it had functioning payphones.

I called my mechanic back home to trouble-shoot and get advice. I called AAA. I called my friend Jen’s kayak shop, Aqua Adventures, who I was planning on visiting anyway. AAA covered the towing fee for Ol’ Blue to a Ford dealership a few miles from the kayak shop. Jen's partner Jake came through rush hour traffic to get me and the trailer.

John is the husband of a kayaking client of mine. He volunteered to help me drive 6 new sit-on-tops to Mexico. This may have been more adventure than he signed up for, but he took it in stride. During our wait time, we unloaded the boats from his trailer, stuck names and numbers on them, and photographed them. We were just reloading when Jake arrived.

The importation of kayaks and gear to Mexico is taking longer than the truck took to repair, so the truck didn’t cost us any time, just $530. Some people pay a lot more than that for an adventure!

Meanwhile, Jen took us to dinner at an amazing sushi buffet, loaned me a truck to get around, and set me up with internet access and office space. She helped John and me get on the water to explore. So we’ve been generously cared for! All of this underscores to me that flexibility and friendship is at least as valuable as planning. Of course luck, or divine providence, doesn’t hurt either.

Freedom

Today is the second day of my annual northward migration. So far, so good. Lots to think about, like this common misperception:

The Freedom of the Open Road. Really, the road is quite limiting. It’s just a line from one place to another, through an expansive landscape. When I turn onto the road, I have 2 options: left or right. Or not to go which is then the third option.

Too much freedom is chaos, and that can feel overwhelming, or lonely. Freedom, with its parameters, is usually that I’m looking for. After all, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. Freedom ain’t worth nothin’, but it’s free. So the song goes.

If I am free on the sea with my kayak, I still need to maintain it and my gear in good order, maintain also my basic nutrition, awareness of the weather and my navigation. I need to have prepared my skills. Without these, I will soon become a floating disaster. Chaos.

Freedom within parameters—the responsibility of preparation and maintenance. This is what I really seek.

The more I have, the less free I am. The more house, property, business, boats, the more responsibility. The more stuff to worry about. There is a balance between having nothing—utter freedom—and having the parameters or tools or toys to pursue that which brings us joy. A boat to go paddling or water skiing or sailing. Work for money. Money for travel. Land to dream with, or farm, or rent, or just mow repeatedly.

How about relationships? Are freedom and commitment compatible? Can a relationship be a parameter within which a satisfying freedom can be found?

Overconfidence

The scorpionfish is an overconfident creature. It has camouflage so convincing that I have been snorkeling nose to nose with one and thought it was part of the rock, until it moved an eyeball. It will venture into water so shallow that you can step out of a kayak onto one. The venom in its dorsal spines is legendary. I once saw someone whose arm was still swollen up to the elbow two days after a puncture on the thumb. I heard about another strong and mature adult male stepping on one and screaming virulent curses upon the fish’s entire lineage, then whimpering for days.

After a morning run today, I waded barefoot into the Sea of Cortez for a rinse, and in water less than knee deep lay a scorpionfish, confident as ever. Thankfully, I saw it. This situation posed an interesting opportunity, with just enough risk to be tempting. The flesh of a scorpionfish is tasty, if you can capture it, kill it, and fillet it without getting pricked by a dorsal spine. That, and I was hungry.

I submerged a 5-gallon bucket in front of the fish, scooped the bucket under its wide head and pushed it in with a stick. All it did was raise its spines. It was way too easy. Too late it realized its captivity and thrashed about in the bucket. The price of overconfidence.

Its head was as hard as a rock. With a pancake flipper I held its spines to the side while trying to stab something vital through the gills with a 6” kitchen knife. Quick stab and pull back while it thrashes. A few times. I felt my adrenaline starting to build, so I walked away. Not a good time to be hasty with those spines flying about. I bathed in the sea and returned to see if the fish was any closer to dead. A couple gulls inquired about the progress. How do they know what’s in the bucket?

The fish thrashed less when I prodded it, and allowed itself to be turned on its side. With the spatula holding it, and my knife hand wrapped in a T-shirt, I began to fillet it in the bucket. I did side B with the fish on the sand. The colors in its skin and tail were beautiful. Greens, browns, oranges all blended in a minute camo.

The second fillet always comes out worse. I left it on a plate while moving 2 steps away to rinse the first one in the sea. This was overconfidence on my part, and I paid in an instant. In swooped a waiting gull and made off with the other fillet! In two midair gulps it was gone. “F*&#$@ER!” I hollered after it. “You stole half my fish! How it got that whole fillet down in one piece, I don’t know.

I had been looking forward to tossing the carcass to the birds. Instead I briefly considered burying it in revenge, but that wore off quickly. A pelican tried to get the wide head and prickly attachments into its bill but couldn’t manage, so the gulls pecked at it and at each other for a while.

Meanwhile, the remaining fillet made two tasty breakfast tacos, and an interesting contemplation on the price of overconfidence.