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.

Kayak Sailing

Living on a sailboat without a kayak would be like being on land without legs. I slip the paddle into the water and am free. Flip up the sail and I’m dancing with the elements! Sometimes to a beach, to explore a coastline, or just to feel muscles flex and air fill my lungs. Kayaking is more than an activity. It’s a way of being. And kayak sailing is a way of celebrating!

Sailing rowdy downwind, spray flying. Then the long paddle back through heaven-blue water, among coral heads of the Makemo atoll. A mellow black-tip shark cruises the reef. Crested terns hover overhead. Palms bow before the relentless trade winds. I’m lost for a moment in the color of the wave that’s about to break onto my kayak. Translucent turquoise. Or was I imagining it had a color at all, being just a brief shimmer and a splash? Salt spray refreshes, and I paddle on into the next one.

On Fakarava atoll, Henrick sailed my kayak and I paddled his downwind to a little island with a cabin and a sky full of seabirds. I had to work for my surf rides, but he just cruised along, surfing anything he wanted to with the push of the sail. The grin on his face was worth every paddle stroke it took to keep up!

A kayak is freedom in a water world. Sometimes I forget to mention it in the stories, but it’s like forgetting to mention that I’m breathing. Do I have to say it? A kayak and sail in the atolls of Polynesia: I have died and gone to heaven.
Flat Earth Kayak Sails

flying the nest

I eat my chicken broccoli burrito and walk the beach as stars appear. Is contentment a constellation? Wavelets come in and I send them back to Guaymas with my love. There, on the other side of the Sea of Cortes, Henrick is working on his sailboat Misty. There I will be going soon.

If the sea dragons and the calendar gremlins and the black hole of boatwork don’t manage to stop us, we’ll be heading across the Pacific this spring. Blue water sailing. I’ve never done it except for two Sea of Cortes crossings last year, if that counts. The Tasmania offshore water was quite blue when I was experimenting with a kayak sail last year around Maria Island, but that really doesn’t count.

When I feel nervous about heading across the Pacific, I console myself with the thought that many have actually survived the experience. Not that this thought will ease the concerned minds of my loving family. Henrick is a competent single-handed sailor, and I’m teachable. Besides we’ll have 2 kayaks on board. This eases my mind! I’ll be able to go out for a “walk” if we’re sailing at less than 4 knots, and I’ll be able to tow Misty if we’re in the doldrums. This is my secret fantasy.

Of course trust is essential to setting out on such a journey. I trust Henrick as a captain. I also trust him as a mate, in the non-nautical sense.

Solid mountains to my right, silhouettes of islands to my left. Surrounded in this expansive nest of peace and belonging. Here I have learned my trade and so many life lessons in the last decade and a half.

From the nest of learning I am ready to fly. I wonder if we ever stop reaching these milestones, these launching points into the next level. Into the new, but not new. Everything in life has been preparing me for this moment.

This beach, this exact spot, 10 years ago. Dan Kennedy, my guiding mentor, said, “there is another level to everything.” I was a 5-year guide just finding my wings.

From this beach, this exact spot, more recently, I stepped into Henrick’s dinghy “Mutiny” with my backpack on my shoulder and my future on the crucible of change. He rowed me out to Misty to sail away from my familiar islands. Again from this beach, I found my wings, and they were sails. And they were love.

Henrick is keeping a blog of his upcoming journey. It’s http://onvoyage.net/wordpress/ .
The first entry read:
This is about travel and alternative living.
Particularly about the voyage with my boat Misty but also to depict people all around who are living their dream of freedom.

Freedom. A simple as just going. Rich enough to keep unwrapping levels of it for a lifetime.

Of course I plan to be back; I have a company to run. My beach “home” at the foot of the mountains and the toes of the sea still fills a part of me. But my heart! My heart lifts its wings again for a new perspective.

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.

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.

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.

Early Morning Workout

All are lit by their chosen fire.

Tiny plankton swirl and glow around my paddle. A neighbor down the beach burns a big fire into the morning. His reddened form leans toward the flame as his spirit pulls forth some truth.

Crescent smile among the stars leaves a spotted trail of moondrops on the water that my kayak pierces on its important journey into the next moment. My heart warms to the distant burn that lights that smile and marks my way.

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.

You’re not going to believe this.

Starbucks, El Cajon, CA. Waiting for John to return from towing his trailer back to Aqua Adventures and come take me and my trailer back to Ford to wait for Ol’ Blue to get fixed. Again.

I was up at 4am this morning to load the last boxes, send the last emails, and be on the road by 5. Interstate 5 south, east on Hwy 94 towards Tecate, a mellower border crossing than Tijuana. Then Ol’ Blue started sputtering again. Nah, it was a bump in the road. Keep driving. No, it really is the engine. See if it keeps doing it. … Some miles later, the answer is yes. Turn around head back towards the Ford dealership. Thirty miles from San Diego, and it dies at a stoplight in a busy intersection. Refuses to start. A friendly motorist in a pickup truck older than mine drags the truck and trailer out of the intersection while hurrying commuters fly around the scene on both sides, turning left from right-hand lanes and almost bisecting the tow.

An hour later, a AAA tow truck shows up to haul the beast back to the Ford dealership who won’t commit to looking at it without the $98 “look at it” fee, even though the very same thing that they supposedly fixed is happening again.

But, there is a spacious parking lot to shuffle boats and vehicles. A Burger King has a handy rest room. The payphone doesn’t work, but thankfully John’s cell does. There are palm trees, including a fake that is actually a cell phone tower. Best of all, there is a Starbucks with internet access and good snacks.

So, maybe John will get to surf his little kayak in San Diego today, and I will get in another swim. Two days ago I swam from beach to cove and back in La Jolla, which is a 2 mile round trip. It felt great!

I had a funny feeling that today wasn’t a Baja day. Hard to explain these feelings, but they end up being right a little too often. Maybe instead of just listening to these feelings, I could envision things happening how I’d like to see them go, and influence the direction of events. Ok, then. The truck’s problem will be a faulty hall effect sensor, which is the part they installed last week. They will replace it at no charge, and Ol Blue will be healed. We will swim and surf this evening in celebration, and cross the border tomorrow morning past good-natured inspection officers who either wave us through or are satisfied by looking briefly at the paperwork and kayaks. The road will unfold gently before us in scenic and uneventful undulation.

Easter trip

April 17 2009

The last trip of the season is over. Eight days around Carmen Island with my friends and clients Sam and Lee. The sea gods smiled on us, for all the windy days were all tailwinds, following us as we rounded the island.

It was a relaxing trip, knocking off the 8-12 nautical miles usually before lunch, and taking time for siesta and exploration in the afternoon. Time too for contemplation and conversation. Time for music and stars and paddling at sunrise.

On day 5 we left Salinas Bay and rode the following seas to the island’s freshwater spring. After a good bath and lunch, we caught some more rides south to the white cliffs that hide a little beach called Arroyo Blanco.

As we rounded the final cliff that Easter Sunday, 5 great egrets took flight from atop the entrance to the cove. Five white angels with long spindly legs and the sun shining through their wings. Up they circled, looking down at us. The purity of their translucent wings, the whiteness of the cliffs, the grace of their flight, balanced between the profound blue of sea and sky, was the perfect Easter song.

Later we walked the arroyo up to a pour-off 40-50’ high, sculpted like modern art in the fossil-laden gray and white rock. Fingers, alcoves, and ledges of the craggy formation have long tempted me to decorate them with candles some still and starry night, and play music until the moon finds me. If I ever have an excuse for some ceremony that can be held on an island in the Sea of Cortez, up an arroyo that requires a little climbing, this is the place. It holds magic.

Today, I carry my flute and play a simple, heartfelt rendition of Amazing Grace beside the fig tree as my reflection on Easter.

Just in Time

It was one of those trips that fills the soul. Sometimes an ephemeral magic happens that connects people in a certain place at a certain time in a special way.

A 7-day circumnavigation of Isla Espiritu Santo near La Paz, run by BOA and led by Rafael and myself. Seven clients, including one teen, came together from Ontario Canada, and 4 more, including 2 teens, randomly came from the same town. One gal came from my home state of Washington.

Kayaking in a commercial trip along a desert island is a unique blend of opposites. Wildlife and plants. The populous, wiggly marine life juxtaposes sparse, stoic plants. The geology tells of coming together and ripping apart; of layers building on layers, pink smooth sandstone, red volcanic flows, round brown rocks impossibly holding formation up a cliff. It tells of pushing, tilting, and slowly eroding, making its way into the sea. White sand beaches nuzzle into deep red coves. White sand coming from coral and shells—pieces of the sea washing onto the land.

People. A kayak trip usually self-selects hands-on, outdoorsy, active people. Independent, yet willing to participate in a group and hire leaders.

Anthropology. The ancients left paint on the cliffs, shell piles on the hills, hollows ground into flat rocks, and rock enclosures in the bays. They lived on what they found here. Whole lives. We carry an obscene amount of food and luxury for just 7 days, and get resupplied halfway through. But through some alchemy of grace, we can walk their trails and feel their presence.

It is the balance of opposites that holds tension on the thread on which we spin.

Guides. Rafa likes to sleep late, set no times, and siesta after lunch. He doesn’t mind launching at 4pm and making dinner in the dark. Anytime we get somewhere, we are “just in time”. When will we go? When we are ready. When will we be ready? After we eat and clean up and pack the boats. When will lunch be? When we’re done making it. There is sound logic in this.

I’m a sunrise connoisseur. A pack-in-the-action kind of person. I’d rather chop veggies than sit and watch somebody else do it. I really get excited if somebody wants to learn something like kayaking, stars, plants. I’ll go all day without sitting once.

It is the straining of opposites that frays the thread until it breaks and the spinning beads go bouncing between the floorboards. This did not happen. A light finger on that thread knows when to release its tug and preserve the singing tension. Just in time. Through it all, that ephemeral magic played, and filled my soul.

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.

Wind and Tide

It’s 5am in my tent at Rattlesnake Beach. I am lightly breaded and ready to be fried. All night the wind blew, and this cheap tent filtered the sand into a fine mist that has dusted everything in here. Clothes, books, the computer somehow even in its case, my pillow, Moose. Me.

It’s a zen practice of acceptance, sleeping in a light rain of sand. Hear the wind stirring the bushes, the blowing particles hitting the tent, then brace yourself. Feel the lightest sprinkling on your face. It doesn’t hurt, but does make you want to stop inhaling for the duration. Relax. Accept what you cannot change, or what you choose not to do the work involved in changing. Eventually through the fairy dust and the flapping of the tent, the intimate nylon clutching alternately at your head and feet, you drift into sleep.

“Sand is my friend,” in the memorable words of Tulio, a guide and student on my last course. “Sand is my friend. I am going to bed with my friend.”

Relax. Accept. You are one with sand. In the Big Geological picture, you and it are made of much the same elements. What makes you different in this moment, is that your sand-dust has the capacity to become grumpy about it, or to cultivate a sense of humor.

It was wind that inspired our moonlight crossing back from Isla Espiritu Santo to a beach near La Paz last week. Three guides Manuel, Rafa and Tulio, plus Ben the owner of the company, and I took a ride in a panga motorboat out to the island with kayaks strapped to the overhead rack. There we met up with guide Leah, who was finishing up a commercial trip. Together we discovered the nuances of kayak maneuvering and discussed risk management for 3 days while traveling down the island.

What a spirited, talented, fun group of people! And they pay me to do this! Or, more accurately, they cover the expenses I incur in becoming able to do this. Certification, insurance, permits, travel, food. They way I am reimbursed is in the way it fills my soul to be with them. The accounts that really matter are filled with laughter, with getting salty and cold and then huddling over cups of hot chocolate together. When Manuel edges his kayak well and plants the paddle just right, making his boat spin… and his smile shows his satisfaction. When I hear Rafa say to his friends after working on a new exercise “Que padre!” When Leah ignores sunset to continue working on her balance brace. When Tulio giggles and declares his friendship with the elements as he crawls into his sandy tent.

Yes, this is why I live. Sure it takes energy, sometimes more than I think I have. It takes preparation in big and little ways. It involves struggle and sometimes feeling like I’m failing, and rethinking my approach. It takes all my heart, but the way it fills me there aren’t words to measure.

But back to the wind, the connector of things, the breath that gives us weather, and rain, and life on this planet. The forecast involved a bit much of it for our plans of crossing back to La Paz by motorboat the morning following our course, so we preemptively paddled the 5 miles back under moonlight over gentle swells. Stealthy silhouettes sliding across moon sparkles. Voices over the water talking, singing. Or silence and a close unity of travelers on a big sea. We camped late on a protected beach outside of La Paz, burned a fire, and crawled into our sleeping bags on the small ledge of beach. Except for Ben, who set his camp way up on the big dune. This should have been a clue to the rest of us.

It was 5am in my sleeping bag on the little sandy beach when something in the sound of the water woke me up. I leaned up on my elbows and looked over the ledge down the slope to the breaking waves. Swell had increased due to wind on the open water. Tide had risen because that’s what it does. Between the two, surges of water were approaching the lip of the ledge we camped on. But not close enough to actually move. I lay my head back down and left one ear open. Some minutes later somebody was moving my feet. I sat up. Water hissed its way into the sand and back down the slope. A wave had floated the foot of my mattress. Salt water was on my tarp, percolating slowly down through the many holes. Awake! I stood up, sleeping bag around my waist. Hopping, I pulled the tarp and everything on it back 20ft to the base of the dune. Then woke the people in the 2 tents closest to the water so they could retreat.

When was high tide? How much higher would it come? I studied Rafa’s tent on a high spot for several minutes, and decided to let him sleep. He seemed to prefer a later start in the mornings. I crawled back into my sleeping bag as the big moon slipped behind the point that protected us from the wind. Shortly Rafa’s light came on in his tent. Figuring it was a sign of more water to come, I relented and got up.

By the time Ben poked his head over the big dune, the sun was well up, and so were we. Leah and I were preparing breakfast as surges of water swept past our ankles. My kitchen at home doesn’t even have running water—what a luxury! “Wave!” someone called out, and we grabbed the table so it wouldn’t wash away with our food on it.

As Leah would point out to her clients at the pre-trip meeting that night with the forecast of a windy week, “We put the adventure in Adventure Travel. Adventure Kayaking, Adventure Snorkeling...” So well prepared is she as a guide that she that very morning practiced Adventure Cooking, and even Adventure Sleeping.

Gloria

It’s a hot night in Bahia Asuncion, too hot to hide under the sleeping bag from the mosquitoes, so I get eaten alive right in Gloria’s front yard. Despite the mosquitoes, meeting Gloria was one of those miracles that happen when you let yourself arrive someplace without knowing exactly what you’re doing there.

Bahia Tortugas. The map got us there on a Baja road trip in late October 2008. Winding roads led us through the maze of town, only once in the wrong direction, head on to an amused local. A shopkeeper directed us to Ruben’s place where we could camp. Ruben gave us the names of his best friends in nearby towns where we might also camp. Gloria was one. “Muy buena persona.”

We arrived a week later in Bahia Asuncion. The map got us there, too. That and the help of some men who pushed us and the Sabritas truck out of the soft sand. Stopping at an aborrotes store for cold drinks, I asked for Gloria, esposa of the late Simon Salinas. The restaurant next door happened to be hers.

You know when you walk into a restaurant and all three patrons greet you warmly, that you’re in the right place. Then the patrons turn out to be Gloria, her son, and her brother, sitting to eat their own meal. You’re so much in the right place, that you set aside your freshly bought cold drinks, order up whatever cold thing she might have in the fridge, and revel in the refreshment and the rightness of it all until they’re done eating.

“Any friend of Ruben’s is a friend of mine,” says Gloria. Her son Memo leads us to their house on the bay, shows us the water hose, and leaves us to ourselves. Oh, beautiful laundry day! Oh, delightful bucket bath! Ah, to rinse away the salt and dust of travel and leave only fresh memories.

Sun swings low, we feel organized and clean again, and walk back to the restaurant for fish dinner and some visiting.

In the mosquito dawn, Little Black Dog limps with me down the beach to admire the gift of the new day waking. Seems he’s adopted us.

Something about Baja is visceral. It’s simple, bare. Close to the soul. Is it the land? The rawness and precious brevity of life here in the desert where survival can be as uncertain as the rains? Is it in speaking from my heart in a language I hardly command, but can limp around in a bit?

Gloria and I get to talking in the morning. She comes out in her nightgown to wish us Buenos dias. She talks about other friends who’ve stayed. Some setting up whole tarp villages. Ruben and his family visiting before her husband died 5 short months ago. Plans to move the restaurant to her house and expand the hospitality aspect. The kids grown and out of school, her husband finally had time and resources to get the permits for those dreams. And then he died.

She doesn’t say how, not that it matters. The sorrow, the tears, she says. Memo came up from La Paz to stay with her for the year and help out. “I’m beginning to feel I can be strong,” she says. “Dios es grande.” Tears come to her eyes, and to mine, too. I can’t imagine the weight of such a loss.

Her kids are coming in 3 days for Dia de los Muertos. It’s the first time this celebration has meant anything personal to them. Not for her, because she lost her parents some time ago. But for her kids, it is now significant. A way to honor and celebrate the connection with those who’ve gone. A reuniting of the family, those present in body and those in spirit.

Lately she’s stayed busy with the humble, 3-table restaurant, which she’s run for 20 years. “I always was more busy than he was.” A smile. The busyness now is good, she says, because it keeps her occupied.

I say to her that feeding people is valiente. I can’t think of a better word at the moment. What I’m trying to say is that I believe in food and the sharing of it. That she is more than staying occupied. Through her grief, she is vibrant. She is giving life to others. The old man who came in last night and ordered “una cena”, a dinner. Simple as that. He probably comes in often.

Food. Its nourishment is a gift of the earth. A ray of the sun. A piece of the soul and a work of the hands that give it. A gift of connection, a gift of life. Even as a negocio it is a gift.

I want to give her my last apple from the home tree. This poor apple is beat up. It’s driven many miles over all kinds of roads. It’s been in a kayak to Cedros Island and back. It’s the most pathetic apple I had since I gave all the prettier ones away already. But its significance is more than a piece of bruised fruit from far away. It’s everything I just said. It’s a piece of my heart, of my home. It’s my gift of living to a woman I admire.

Last Islands Trip

Was it an omen when we discovered on the first night that we’d forgotten to pack the coffee? What could be worse to forget, except perhaps toilet paper? Or maybe the prevailing omen was one of resourcefulness and kindness when David paddled the coffee out to us the next morning through the rare Sea of Cortez fog.

I didn’t think about it until almost the end of the trip, but if plans hold their course, this was my last Sea of Cortez Islands trip that I will lead for my employers of 8 years, Sea Kayak Adventures. On this route I have spent most of my last 8 winters, on the beaches of Carmen and Danzante Islands. My next trip is the La Paz 10-day, and that’s it for the season. Next season I hope to be busy with my own trips in new areas, and gently close the book on an era of paddling giant double kayak/barges and making extravagant meals. A change to look forward to while still feeling nostalgic, and a little nervous about braving the new. But at the beginning of this trip, its significance had not yet dawned on me.

When my well-coffee’d group finally launched into the fog later that morning to skirt Danzante Island, we were accompanied by a pod of dolphins. They passed directly beneath some of the kayaks. Leisurely we cruised together along the rocky coastline while mystery clouds poured into the creases between hills. Fog played hide and seek with silhouettes of odd desert plants on the ridges. Dolphins stuck their noses in the air to look around. Slapped the water with their tails. Circled back with apparent curiosity. The white darkness of fog moved behind us on the water, and sun bathed our happy aquatic procession.

One afternoon on southern Carmen Island we all hiked inland from Playa Blanca to see if we could find the fabled Indian well. There is a shell midden at the beach being eroded by recent storms, and a guest on my trip years ago found an arrowhead on the beach. An Indian well would make sense here. Except for the flat marine shelf we were on, and the proximity of the sea. Curiosity had all of us in its grip, so we followed the south rim of the arroyo naming, photographing, fondling and sniffing plants along the way. The arroyo below us was thick with foliage. Mesquite trees and giant torote reached up to the level of the rim. Palo verde clung onto the sides tenaciously.

A little barrel cactus torn by some torrent or wind clung to the rim’s sharp soil by one filamentous root. One of our party wanted to pick it up and “save” it, though she didn’t know what she would do with it, exactly. That instinct to give suffering things a hug.

We were a group more experienced in administering hugs than kayaking. Eight women in or near their 60s, woven together by threads of friendship and friends of friends, though none knew everybody. Plus one young couple and a middle-aged pair of fun-loving best friends. Derek from the couple and our guide Mario were the only men, but they managed. The eight women were all fit and spirited. Well versed in rolling with the surprises of life. Motherhood, grandparenting for many, travels around the globe. At least two had fought breast cancer and won. Several owned their own businesses, one donating much to cancer research. Now they were tackling the new challenges of a kayak camping trip with grace and humor. For some it was their first time in a kayak, ever. And it was the first time for all of them on an archeological expedition to find an Indian well on a desert island.

Mario walked ahead, and called my name. I left the pitied barrel cactus and those who wanted to hug it and followed the sound of his voice. At the top of the pouroff, just above what would be the waterfall had there been water running, and overhung by trees, was a hole about 4 ft around with fine gravel at the bottom. Decades or centuries after its creation, after untold storms had carried debris into it, it was still deep enough to hold significant water after a storm. Mario lowered himself in, marking the depth, scientifically, at one Mario and a half.

On the fifth day we awoke after a full night of westerlies that had been preceded by southerlies, and both Mario & I suspected north wind within the next days. We changed plans. After a morning hike and early lunch, we crossed to the protection of Punta Coyote. Except Punta Coyote was occupied, so we continued to Rattlesnake Beach with a fun 10 knot following sea. The mesquite-bordered campsite at Rattlesnake where my friends Dan & Heather stayed two years ago was vacant, as was the entire south end of the popular RV beach. So we landed and made ourselves at home. So many layers of memory and experience there for me. Klaus & Parvin’s newly vacant site was the next one, where Derek and Michelle pitched their tent. Bunny put up her tent in the subtle arroyo mouth where David & I slept out on the beach together for the first time. Where the Giggle Girls pitched among the mangle dulce bushes, I used to park my truck when I left on short personal trips, except the year Paul and Alisa were camped there.

As we set up the kitchen in Dan & Heathers site, I wrapped myself happily in blankets of warm memory. Somebody requested for Happy Hour entertainment on our final evening together that Joan and I do some voice & flute duets. I put my flute together and was trying to remove enough popcorn from my teeth to play when I turned to see 3 people entering the edge of the campsite. I waved, then recognized them. Scott and Cara. And Hans! The one responsible for introducing me to kayaking and Baja ten years ago. The one whose fault I was here at all. The inspiration for this life I lead. This is the moment when the soundtrack should do something dramatic. These vortices of energy and time and people just don’t do this except in fiction.

I visited Hans and Scott and Cara that night after my crew had fallen asleep. We retold old stories and caught up on news till the southern cross and scorpius came up. A new memory to snuggle into and smile when the cold wind blows.

The next morning, as planned, and just after coffee was ready, Joan and I faced the Sea of Cortez where Danzante Island’s silhouette glowed pregnant with a sun about to rise, and we harmonized Morning Has Broken. She and I, both recent breast cancer survivors, shared that bond and a general affection for each other. We became one energy for a moment in the music and the first glow of morning. The sun peeked up, a reflection widened on the water, sparkled, and everything came together on this last morning, to the soundtrack of voice and flute.

Thus a magical ending of an era, and a fitting beginning of the next.

Wandering

Surf Camp, January 2007

I set out along the road at a jog. I set out into the wilderness, the road being only the memory of passing tires on impressionable desert soil. Beyond the road the influences of consequence are wind and the paws of coyotes, whose tracks are then erased by wind. Sand piles up behind low shrubs, drifts in waves into ravines. It sorts into ripples and stripes of graytone, and remembers passing mice until the wind rearranges all.

There are also decomposing piles of shells from indigenous people long ago. All living things, in their task of being alive, move resources from one place to another, in their hands, their bellies, their shovels, or with their orders. The indigenous people pulled shells from the sea, ate the fleshy manufacturers of those shells, abalone, clam, sea snail, limpet, and mussel. They left shell heaps that are now, two hundred years after the last clamshell was scraped of its flesh and tossed away, composting into mounds of calcium-rich earth. Plants grow out of the gray, fragment-littered ground.

Landscape passes at a slow trot. Sharp contrast of red hills and blue sky. In the distance, the sea dances white with wind and sun. Here it feels like wilderness. Like I am far from what gives modern humans the leverage to make indelible marks on landscape, make disproportionately huge movements in resources. Yet the simple movement of shells still shows, and I accept that this is just the way of things. Everything matters. And everything, eventually, is forgotten.

It feels good to wander. My feet mock intent, and turn left on a coyote trail, or follow a volcanic intrusion to the edge of the sea, or leap across low shrubbery and rocks in a straight line towards some unknown magnet only to turn again and follow the twisting rise and drop of the coastal trail. This feels alive in a way no obedient jog on the island road back “home” can be. There is something fundamental in wandering solo and totally unfettered by expectation (except eventual return).

I identify with the rocks beneath my feet and the wind in my ears. Minerals and matter that makes me was once rock, and will be again. With the wind I share breath and movement and cycles of in and out, draw and relax.

There is perspective in seeing only earth and sea and sky. In hearing only surf and wind and birds. In feeling the cool and warm of wind and sun. There is perspective in the endurance of the shell piles of the indigenous people. Simplicity and legacy; stories left by stone tools, hunger, and ingenuity.

It is human to wonder at ones own legacy and the frame of its endurance: the life span of friends and family? The decay of a homestead? The life of a tree? The time of literacy in a given language? The weathering of a rock? The recognition of a geologic deposit from some resource displaced? The survival of a species? The half-life of plastic and its determination to float in circles on the sea?

It is human, too, to ponder the value of a legacy at all. And the unavoidability of it. My legacy this week will be carved in the face of a wave. It lives but a moment and crashes on the sand. My legacy this hour is set one footfall at a time into the rocks and soil of a tiny coastal mountain range. My legacy today will be the sum of what I own divided by the total of my days, and the landfill it will eventually occupy.

Being out here makes me want to reduce that sum and allow more for wandering. For coming home into the freedom of spirit and feet. Being out here makes me thankful that I’m here at all, and in this moment, all else pales.

Paddle on, my Friends!
Ginni

Amazon Pirate

Not much reliable history has survived about the Amazons, so it is not surprising that some fringe elements escaped till now.

It is said they were a race of warrior women, much feared and fantasized about. So tough and single-minded they were that they removed one breast to better shoot their deadly arrows. Most were right-handed and therefore removed the right obstacle, but now we find evidence of a left-shooting combatant, known to us now simply as L.

We’ve heard that L was as fearless as any, taking even to the seas to pursue enemies, and occasionally to pursue such mundane things as food and beautiful sunsets. First she started in a one-woman boat she made of driftwood, but soon her maritime escapades grew to inspire whole fleets of salty sheilas.

Somewhere along the way our paddling archer L seems to have also lost her right hand, and replaced it with a hook, resulting in a truly pirate appearance and attitude. She took to the sea in whatever craft she could, calling her crew to action with a “ChaRRRRRRge the RRRRRascals!” or “CaRRRRRY on! And look lively now!” or agreeing with a hearty “ARRRRRRmen to that, Lasses!”

Truly, L was a sight to behold in the wild tossing of sea and wind, brandishing the hook and wearing the only left-handed Amazon bikini in miles—that is with the right side covered. Beneficiaries of modern technology we are to have digital time-travel cameras now (even though they are a bit fuzzy) and photographers brave enough to operate them!

The images that came back to us from the ill-fated photographer’s transmissions were few—just one peaceful moment while the pirate flag was being hoisted before our man was pulled from hiding and hooked to oblivion. We honor his sacrifice. If we can find another adventurous soul, we may try to capture L in a more festive moment.

Because they may be disturbing, the surviving images are hidden deep in a cave on an uncharted island. Treasure seekers must negotiate the treacherous pirate’s maze, designed to discourage all but the most determined. Neither journey nor photos are for the faint of “aRRRRRRRt”.

Treasure seekers’ hint: the pirates treasure map lies embedded among the tales of a notorious kayaker’s website. The most infamous kayaker on all of Puget Island on the Columbia. (or it will in a couple days when the pirates get around to hiding it there!)

Unwrapping

Dec 18 2006

I was an oversized Christmas present bound in a retro purple floral tube top, and it was time to unwrap. We waited till dark so I could see my reflection in the picture window since we don’t have a mirror in here. I turned up the heat, and David put on some sultry strip tease music. When faced with a lack of options, celebrate the one!

Off came the warm fleece with a shimmy of the shoulders. Around in a circle it twirled, and launched in a direction away from the propane heater. Then the long sleeved T-shirt. Ahh, there was the lovely tube top with drain tube and receptacle pinned to it. After repining the drain to my sweats, I seductively pulled open that luscious Velcro, slowly, slowly, with flirtatious glances at David, who ultimately helped me with the satiny shoulder straps and the gauze packing.

And there was our first full view of the work of that talented flesh artist, my surgeon. A line of gathered and stapled skin ran from just off my sternum to a few inches below my armpit in the subtlest of s-curves. A few inches down my side, the drain tube exited a tight hole in my body, secured there with one loop of thread through the skin next to it.

In this unveiling, we were the fortunate heirs of information from many who’d experienced it before. We’d heard how traumatic this first look can be, and we waited until we both felt ready. We’d talked in the days before, speculated, joked, peeked at the first few staples, and I’d run my hand over part of the new flatness to combat itchiness. We were as mentally ready as we could be.

We looked in the window-reflection, took close-up photos so I could see different angles, counted the 20 staples, tried my arm through a range of motion, studied the pattern of purple-yellow bruises, traced where the drain tube went under the skin, admired how smoothly the skin came together, and probed where the missing nerves interrupted the sensation of touch. Best of all, I got a thorough back scratch with the tube top gone.

“What do you think,” David asked about this marvel of modern medicine, my new body.

I grinned and said, “It’s pretty cool!”

…..

I am being sustained by the prayers and good energy of family and friends, and I thank you more than I can say with words.

Paddle on!

Ginni