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).

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.

If you had wings

If you had wings, what would you do with them?

I would fly out to the ice edge and see who passes there, what the hooded mergansers fish.
I would watch snow melt in the sea.
I would fly to the hilltop and watch the sun rise over all 72 islands in the Baie des Isles.
The eagle and I would meet in an updraft and I would stare him down:
         my current, my space; I'm here: don't bother me now.
         Go find your own air.
That settled, I would carry on.

Notes
This poem, if it is a poem (perhaps it is a draft for a poem), emerged out of an exercise that I gave a writing class a couple of years ago; it is based on a poem entitled "Wings" by Susan Stewart. One of my favourite poems--up there with Neruda's Estravagario and his Book of Questions, Stewart's poem is an interview based upon the question, "if you could have wings would you want them?"  I changed the question slightly, and then, of course, had to try to answer it myself.

(For some English translations of some of Neruda's poems see http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Spanish/Neruda.htm)

Genoa Bay

The tide 
bursts in like
a river. With it, clouds.
Gulls rise, crying. Wings flash on the
mountain.

White blooms
of arbutus,
like seaspray, cloying. Red
bark peels, leaves drop, reveal green heart
wood. Scarred.

Floathouse
artist pounds old
nails, bends steel, polka dots his
boat. Turns jetsam to mandalas,
cursing.

Notes
Cinquains, again.  Pictures were taken in Genoa Bay, where we have been anchored this week, a wonderful harbour full of colourful characters, live-aboards and float homes.  Genoa Bay is at the end of a dead end road, and surrounded by steep mountainous land.  The photos are of the marina from the shore, of an arbutus tree in bloom, an arbutus trunk, and two large sculptures made by Genoa Bay artist, Tom Faue. As far as I know, Tom doesn't curse as he makes his mandalas, although he might. The line was poetic license, not depiction.

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

The whales came again last night

The whales came again last night
bumping up against the hull, gurgling
at the through-holes, rocking gently rocking. Then
they began to sing--sounds of damp fingers
trailing mouths of goblets, slip-stick crystal music,
pure ethereal tones knitting voices in the night.

I dreamed we'd seen them singing, these after-
midnight whales; they were oddly jointed
giants, skins crayon-coloured in aquamarines
and rusty reds. In my dream
in the waking world, no one cared what
we had seen.  They went about their daily
lives, pumping gas and annotating
endnotes. But we had heard the whales sing.

Notes
Several times in the middle of the night, while we were on the boat in northern British Columbia last summer, we were wakened by a peculiar, ethereal singing, vibrating through the hull. It was often accompanied by a gentle rocking or bouncing in the water around us.  What we heard corresponds to no known whale songs, though portions of the pitch approach the songs of Southern Killer Whales, while the slow rhythms of what we heard resemble humpback songs,  albeit at a much higher pitch. I report on a dream I really did have here. We still do not know what creature we were hearing, but are profoundly attached to the idea that we've heard the whales singing. For more on that trip, see http://quoddysrun.wordpress.com/

Images are from Khutze Inlet, where we first heard the singing, and Bolin Bay, where we heard it again. The last image was taken not far from Malcolm Island, looking towards the mainland.

To hear recordings of various whale vocalizations, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_whale_vocalizations#Blue_Whale_.28Balaenoptera_musculus.29

Why do crystal glasses give off a sound when you rub them with a wet finger?  It has everything to do with vibration and what is called the "slip-stick" phenomenon. See http://www.ccmr.cornell.edu/education/ask/?quid=1143

Finally, just for the pure pleasure and virtuosity of it, see Brian Engel play Mozart's Adagio in C Major for Glass Armonica: http://vimeo.com/2073455

On the Uses of Travel (or what I did with my summer break)

I am adrift, severed from the sense of time or season that geography lends a life.
Travel has scrambled me, undone my sense of sequence, jumbled spring summer autumn and winter. The calendar of days where I was seems strange now, the unspooling of hours where I am equally odd. I can’t seem to catch up to myself. Where am I, and what is real?

I have no idea.

I race from east coast winter to a season of wind, dry days and cool nights in Mexico. Autumn?—but the calendar reads April, May. Then I return home, briefly, and rush away again, west, to British Columbia.

Habituated to twilight foggy Junes in Nova Scotia, I am frazzled by the constant light. Cold enough for three wool blankets at night, but the portlights stream with sun after 4 am. 18 hours later, we tumble towards twilight. Summer light but not summer heat. When will that come?

Oddly, only north of 50 degrees latitude do we discover heat. And deep fjords winding between snow-covered mountains. There a glacier, and here, seawater warm enough to swim. A landscape of contrasts so large your eyes feel as if they must roll in different directions.

We turn south into cold, and then fly east towards lightening—a strike on the wing!—fog, heat, more darkness. The loon cries; the full yellow moon says fall is coming. So too the calendar (for once they are in accord!), and the sudden onset of school related work.

It’s glorious but confusing. I can’t keep up, my sleep seems forever in arrears.

Adrift, in debt, a little bit lost—that’s sailing isn’t it? We are deranged into change.