Journey's End, or Reflections As One Thing Passes Into Another

Sky passes into sea, Rose Harbour, Kunghit Island, Gwaii Hanaas

4:30 am Atlantic Daylight Savings Time Sunday 27 August, 2017  West Quoddy, Nova Scotia

Just a week ago we were in British Columbia, preparing for our last day on the boat for the year.  We'd moved into the launch slip, for the boat was to be hauled for some repairs, and eaten a quiet meal in the cockpit as darkness dropped over the Fraser River.  Overhead, dozens of airplanes streamed in on the same route: a sharp turn over the towers of the Alex Fraser Bridge, and then the lock onto a final approach over the river; they rumbled overhead to the airport, lights like a searching beam coming right at us. Our bags were half packed; the next morning I'd strip the bed, wash the sheets, defrost the freezer and scrub down the remainder of the living spaces on the boat, while Marike stowed lines and investigated the persistent and worrying flow of water over the top of the rudder, among dozens of other vital details. Cushions were clean and stacked in the salon, bedding and blankets bagged, charts rolled up, guidebooks put away. And just like that, the journey, which had unfolded gradually across time and space, embedding landscapes and experiences in our flesh and memories for months, rumpled closed; its urgencies began to dissipate.

Rising tide. Hakai Luxvabalis Recreation Area, Queen Charlotte Sound

Did it happen? Of course it did--finally, we'd made it to Haida Gwaii and back--but the marks the voyage left on our bodies, the habits of vigilance and care that it instilled in the rhythm of our days, had begun to disperse.  Before long we would be embedded in the life of the land again, unconscious of each fluctuation in barometric pressure, unconcerned about the exact times of the tides or the force and direction of the wind. Before long we'd be in another geography, on another coast, in our house. Then the question in the middle of the night would no longer be 'how strong is the wind? or 'does the anchor hold?' but something more diffuse and existential: 'who am I; where am I; and what must I do that matters next?' 

A lengthy and demanding voyage relieves us of such questions in many ways by giving us a trajectory and many clear parameters: the goal each day is to make good enough judgments about when, where and how to go a certain distance, that we may arrive safely. The consequences of failing to do this are fairly immediate and significant. Why one goes is not at issue: the meaning of life is to be alive and to stay alive, to become a resonating body, attuned to the wind and waves, other creatures, the landscape, the tides, and to the sounds of the boat. You ask, 'did we make the right call there?' 'is the raw water pump working?' not 'who am I and why do I exist?' You move from chart to chart, asking how best to get from here to there; such efforts, for the time one makes them, seem to preclude the feeling that one has gone astray--above all these days, for thanks to the extreme precision of Global Positioning Systems, it is almost never necessary, while underway, to puzzle out painstakingly where you are. 

Fog lifts and smoke remains. Entering Johnstone Sound from Blackney Passage.

But back on land, reinserted (however fitfully) into the news cycle and various pressing human concerns as we attend to the circuitry--the communications, the appliances, the vehicles, the yard work and habits of cleanliness and order--that sustains our carbon-rich lives, the absence of charts, of an evident trajectory across the repetitions that structure each day, makes existence itself feel heavy, tenuous, puzzling.  Without a map to mark the way, questions about the meaning of life surface: "why am I doing what I am doing? Is it worth it? What am I building as we move from day to day?" Bare existence seems never enough.

And it isn't--not for anyone, and certainly not as a meaningful narrative about living. Elaboration is crucial. So too, a sense of direction. Somehow, always, we want the sense and unfolding self-evidence of the journey, even if that can only be played, on the one hand, as risk, and on the other, as retrospection.

Stars spangle the night sky and a thick dew settles over every surface. Sometime in the day to come, it will rain and we will sit indoors at our computers, writing, searching, replying, seeking contact, affirmation, revelation. But for now, to look out at the Milky Way just might be enough. The dog curls at my feet. I drink a glass of water and go back to bed.  

Grey light of early morning rises, blotting out the stars. I know that another night soon, I'll be up again to weigh the anchor of my soul, and find it wanting.

Carved cedar mortuary pole returns to the earth, K'uuna Llnagaay (Skedans), Haida Gwaii.

Notes

All photographs were taken in British Columbia during the course of a voyage to Haida Gwaii aboard Quoddy's Run (June 3-20 August 2017).

Because (for want of)

Because wind.
Because rain.
Because too damp earth.
Because rust or pitted steel.
Because fatigue.
Because no one there.
Because night.
Because stormy.
Because inattention.
Because heavy.
Because jackstand sunken or failed.
Because 40,000 pounds.
Because weight shifting.
Because gravity.
Because ground.
Because not there.
Because trust.
Because not trustworthy,
                        the boat came tumbling down.

I knew as soon as my friend, Bess Rose, sent me an article on the English grammar shift of the year--look sharp, "because" is now a preposition!--that I wanted to write a poem built around this phenomenon. I also knew that I wanted to try to tell a story in my poem. As I thought about the problem, I remembered a version of that rhyme, "for want of a nail":

For want of a nail the shoe was lost;  
For want of a shoe the horse was lost;
For want of a horse the battle was lost;  
For the failure of battle the kingdom was lost—
All for the want of a horse-shoe nail.

This rhyme, which exists in many forms, is widely supposed to refer, initially, to the unhorsing and death of Richard III of England in the Battle of Bosworth in 1482. And indeed, in Shakespeare's Richard III, King Richard shouts out "A Horse! A Horse! My kingdom for a Horse!" There are other versions that the British used during World War II that implicate ships in a similar manner--this is, in fact, the version I'd learned:

"For want of a nail, the board was lost. For want of the board, the vessel was lost. For want of the vessel, a battle was lost. For loss of the battle a war was lost...."

We do not yet know if our own boat is lost, but its downing is a similar story of inattention at the yard where we had placed her, trusting to them to look after her well. It seems, however, that a jackstand (one of the supports used to keep a boat upright on land) failed beneath Quoddy's Run, and that others might not have been quite properly placed....

This poem is dedicated to Bess, in gratitude for her grammatically keen eye and many gifts.
A link here, to the Atlantic article she sent me:  http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/english-has-a-new-preposition-because-internet/281601/

Why has this strange and truncated use of because as a preposition come about? Because internet, and texting and general busy-ness and laziness and shorthand, you can now dispense with that pesky tiny preposition of, and proceed directly from because to cause. Because fun! Because because.

Photos were taken in West Quoddy, NS this week.

The Names of Boats

Westerly Zealot
Reality Symphony

The names of boats are little windows on history, place and contemporary passions. If you cannot guess the character of a boat owner from a boat's name, you may nevertheless gain insight into the kind of community that person inhabits, or the values that matter to them.

Big expensive power boats licensed in the US or Canada tend to have expansive concept names derived from business or some sort of neoliberal ideology: Enterprise, Imagination, Liberty, Emancipation, Free Spirit, Freedom.

Fishing boats are traditionally named after owners' family members--often daughters, sisters and/or mothers (Helene II, Ruby M, Claire Susan, Mary Louise,) although not always--in Alaska they seem often to bear mens' names or place names: West Foreland, Baranoff IV,  Frederick John IV.

Smaller trawlers or sailboat boats may be named, in great seriousness or jest, after songs, poetic or visual lines, animals, place names, or fanciful literary creatures in English or other languages: Moon Dance, Wave Dancer, Breaker's Edge, Salish Sea, Grey Fox, Tula Girl, Blue Pteron, Quoddy's Run, Right Galah, Sacred Goat, Keshkan. Dinghies also have names, which are often small jokes: Minnow, Roo, or Longstory [short] for your shortest boat.

Sometimes a boat name is a statement or a philosophical or activist claim: Our Turn Now, Adventure Now, Sea Shepherd.

Large commercial vessels, ferries, military vessels and Coast Guard ships all have their own naming rules and customs--often after famous places (Lituya) or famous men, or both. 

In British Columbia, many of the ferries on regular inter-island runs are named by combining a place (Port Alberni) with the designation Queen or Princess, depending upon the size of the vessel (Queens are larger than Princesses, and Celebrations are larger still.)

Cruise ships follow similarly precious naming designations--for example, this summer in Alaska we saw the Norwegian Diamond, the Norwegian Pearl, and the Norwegian Jewel, as well as a host of variously bedecked Princesses and Celebrities and Stars.

Sometimes the names of boats docked in a particular place seem to me to form a poem. In fact, years ago, when we had sailed into Puerto Vallarta, Marike started this game by making up silly chants from the names of the larger vessels moored at the marina: Rainmaker Superstar Fearless Great Escape Ruthless Attitude Adjustment Rocket.

Here is one such "found poem," composed from the names of tenders and seiners on the #1 North Dock in Petersburg, Alaska, on the 26th of July, 2013:

Obsession
Adventure
Westerly
Zealot
Reality
Symphony
Saint Janet

The nature of the poem shifts, depending up what sort of punctuation you put where--"Obsession! Adventure! Westerly Zealot" is not the same as "Obsession Adventure Westerly Zealot."  And Reality shifts entirely if it is grouped with Zealot, rather than Saint Janet.

Go down to the docks if you can, and build your own poem. If you do, please share it with me!

Notes
Pictures were all taken during the summer of 2013 in Alaska and British Columbia in Wrangell, Ketchikan,  Van Anda (Texada), Meyer's Chuck, and St. Petersburg. The last photo is of Quoddy's Run, whole, at dock in Petersburg.

Indecision

Who, if not you,
ever made a ritual of cinders?

Who, if not you,
loved the lost, last hopeless fix?

Who, if not you,
will care for an absolute?

Who salvages a dead wreck's timber,
or refuses her own goodbye?

At night, in darkness, in the grief of flight
we travel, we keep watch, our bleak eyes unblinking, while

over that hill, our hopes are burning.
Who, if not you,

bites sleeping fire and ruined salt?
What is the value you give your dreams?

Who carries on,
detained by shadows, among trembling wings?

Who knows how long and far these faint hopes
will carry us?

Every night we lie in wait, our stony thoughts
clattering in the waves,

confused as to estates and territories,
the lost science of tears, those ship's ruins we love too much.

Italicized lines are taken from Neruda's "Sonata and Destruction" and rearranged. Photos are taken from the deck of Quoddy's Run in British Columbia, from behind Russell Island, and from Queen Charlotte Strait.

We continue, uncertain about what to do with our quite seriously damaged boat, which blew over at the Canoe Cove yard during a storm in late September. Part of the surveyor's report is in. It doesn't look good. While it would be wiser to cut and run perhaps, what would it mean to give up on our vessel, the dreams she provoked or the places she has taken us? This poem is for her--and for skipper extraordinaire, my co-insomniac, Marike Finlay.

Antics of several species lately observed on Vancouver Island

                   i
Everything aggregates
in the spring:
boats docks anenomes
blossoms shades of blue
shades of green

starfish gather under pilings
lines tangle on decks and wharves
raccoon paws trail water
from cedar board
to cedar board.

                 ii

Everything proliferates
in the spring:
jackstands bicycles wheel barrows

waste diesel waste oil new signs
white paint a rowing punt
a house for sale ripples
of refracted sun.

                 iii
Everything is prodigal
in the spring.

Like Feather Dusters (subclass sedentaria), but
profligate,
wavering heads full of wanderlust
we root ourselves in water waste and
light; we hymn
the margin,
love the strand.

Notes

Photos were all taken yesterday, 29 April, in the work yards and on the dock--or beneath them--at Canoe Cove, Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
Wheelbarrows help to carry heavy loads down the docks to the boats; it's a steep roll at high tide.
The Troschel's Sea Star has five points and white spots, and lives just below the low-tide line of protected coastal regions from Alaska to Northern California.
Raccoon prints are, well, just that.
Jackstands are stands of various and variable heights, used to support boats that have been hauled out on the land.
All solvents and poisons used in the yard must be disposed of properly.
A rowing punt with a new coat of paint and varnish shines in the sun.
Light bounces from the tops of small waves onto the hull of a boat at the dock.
Banded Feather Dusters (Sabella crassicornis, Subclass Sendentaria), found the length of the Pacific coast,  are a sea creature described in the taxonomies as a "flowerlike animal."  Like anenomes, they fasten themselves to a dock or piling with a tube-like foot, then sweep nutrition into their bodies with their feathers. Feather dusters must also excrete fecal matter through this same tube: a "ciliated groove" runs the length of this tube-body, and permits the animal to dump out its waste.
Bicycle, stored between dock sections. "It seems to work," says its owner, a ferry captain.
Anenomes come in many varieties--"aggregating anenomes," "proliferating anenomes"--as below, and "frilled anenomes." This particular anenome kept company with a Red Sea Cucumber.  All of these animals tend, like plants, to root themselves to particular spots, then colonize--rather as we do.  Glorious but difficult to uproot yourself. Do we ever really succeed?

                

Things seen but not explained

Night-dark day

Night-
dark day,
dismal drizzle
crying gulls. One boat plows
through mist, hauls weighted
traps, throws star-
fish back.

Notes
This poem is a modified English form of a cinquain,  a form  of syllabic verse in which each line consists of a strict number of syllables (like Haiku, with its 5/7/5 formula).  Initially, in French, cinquains were poems built of five-line stanzas. In English, however, the cinquain developed a specific formula, so that the first and last lines consisted of two syllables, the second four, the third six, and the fourth eight. I added an extra first line here (making a sextain?) for sense and sound.

So foggy today that the day is both dark and blind. The sea star picture was taken on Hakai Beach in Central BC in full sun. We don't have such wildly brilliant starfish on the east coast. But the five points make their point, and add desperately needed light to the day.

Suddenly Sparrows: A Report on Certain Signs Lately Observed in West Quoddy

9 April 2013

Suddenly sparrows and
constant singing.
They begin before sunrise.

Cluster of ducks at the point.
Geese root in dead grasses,
and the pheasants are silly.

Yesterday lobster boats launched,
traps mount on the dock:
steep wakes slop against shore.

Muddy boots and scent of earth,
rushing clatter of ditchwater,
still no frogs.       

Notes

Pictures were taken on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia near Gammon's Pond, in West Quoddy and in Marie Joseph.

Red Boat Haiku

Thin skim of sea ice
and a red boat is still docked,
tethered to summer.


Notes
Poetry exercise. Take a picture. Then describe what you see, simply, in one short line. Make sure you place the kireji, the twist in the middle at line two; you are looking for a break in logic, the shift that alters a reader's mental picture. Complete the idea. 17 syllables: 5/7/5. Voila: Haiku.