The ocean was lovingly yet assertively pushing us toward home. I did not grasp what this meant although I have returned here annually for the last 14 years of my migratory, gypsy life. We had become so endemic to the sea, neither seasick nor impatient with doldrums in the last push of our adventure that had so dutifully provided us with the ‘fair winds and following seas’ of a sailor’s dream. It was the first long permittable weather system we had seen. Often tested by mean currents, atrociously adverse winds and heedlessly daunting weather systems that floated among the premises of our boat and morales, we had finally reached a sort of steadiness.
Albatross glided en masse as the last of the oceans swells curled under our bow. In the long run of things, it seemed a short sight of the ache and struggle I am sure we endured. This is the way it always is when you are experiencing life to the very soul of itself. You think, “Thunder, all-around pelting rain, and not a dry pair of socks, I have got to change my ideals and get my head right-- if I ever step foot aboard again-- I should just as well blast myself to fasting in India.” The sun peaked through before us and the soundless rush and trickle of the guiding ocean tipped us nearer the coast of Washington. Home!
We made good speed night and day, thanks to the auto-tiller’s persistence and our paranoid wakening. Since our battle and fringing storm-evasion on the southerly grand left-turn, our big right-hand turn (and truly the most easterly heading we had yet made) was so welcome; we had thought the sea had tested us well enough to favor us.
At that easterly turn the air dampened and soponified into a spongy cleanness of oxygen I could hardly fill my head enough with. The ocean teaches many odd lessons, some delusional, some profound. One of the most literal I found to be was that the ocean loves the land. It takes the purest, lightest dew and casts it into clouds, which, through convection, trees and other sweet green explosions soak up. This clear delineation of billowy clouds marks land, and beneath it, through rays of enlightening sunlight, was the mossiest, wettest piece of earth I could want in my heart. Often I return to ‘home’ in Seattle, where the plane shocks me into cold and savage road-rage of a very white variety. This was different; how gently we rocked up the coast, and how many amazing animals and humans we had met along the way gave me a sense of holistic return to my misty forest.
We anchored in Neah Bay where we had embarked, 6 months ago, and where we first met the ocean’s fury head-on. We laughed at the swells pressed to the Puget’s mouth remembering the initial horror of our new tenancy. I admit I have never talked to the wind and tide, the whales and fishes, the lightning and waves so much as this trip has reminded me I am able. It’s been said that humans left Eden when cursed with the curiosity of sin. I believe that is so for certain folks. We can still talk to a great spirit freely, we just need to have it stricken into our minds the memory of such Paleolithic symbol-language-- faith. Many of us are not nearly as dumbfoundedly amazed and utterly stupefied as we should be at the natural resounding infinity of things. I am sorry for that. As we entered between Vancouver Island and Tatoosh Islands, I felt the presence of humans again, the logged mountain tops, the smoke and steel flashes of cars on some low highway.
Anyway, Neah Bay is a depressed fortress of a once fierce tribe. It’s dryer than a skinny skeeter and of no use to some thirsty sailors. We swept away at 10- 13 knots to Port Angeles where we dove into the nearest dive like fishes and knocked glasses with a few fishy locals.
I sniffed the air like a hound once we turned around the (freaky long) spit. There rested the relaxed sweetness of cottonwood blossoms. The wind threw punches at our headsail (learn yer fightin from the sea’s gales and yeel never risk defeat) and Vince was all ropes and sea-spray—I was admittedly swooning to the max, nose dipped into the thick air. Though I had missed mushroom season in fall, I had the luxury of stuffing my nose with that embalmed memory of spring’s sweetness. The anchor dropped and the GPS drew our lasso of success (stuck in the NW mud quite nice).
And now we are northerly close to being home, home where spring has been reborn into pansies and hyacinth. I feel so much a belonging to this place rolling in audiences of pines and spiraling spruce. Though I have always felt I belonged to the earth, I now feel I belong to her seas as well. These forests mark the earliest muses of exploration for both the young Vince and Xoe. We have traveled successfully and know the figure and rituals of the ocean—thankful for surviving the leap of watery faith.
Of the many inhaling and pendulous lessons the ocean taught us was of huge death. We had been treated to fields of dolphins, symphonic whales and arrangements of seabirds, but with a fisher’s dark warning on our departure from Eureka-- we were to face death and the destruction from the event at Fukushima. While we noted quite a bit more flotsam and less life on our northerly trek, we were met by a seismic dead grey whale afloat and marked by seabirds. Floating high, we saw the disembodied mass out of place, delicately serpentine in the swell of the ocean. Though we were at too quick a pace to query on the cause of death, the whole fleshy whale was a look up close of one of the world’s largest, least understood beings. To understand the experience of this creature, even partially, is something we cannot fathom. The bigness of her spirit was as heavy as the leaking clouds above, feeding the birds and sharks in its final extraordinary migration. The baleen and fin stuck lifeless into the air, all surrounded by the ripples of life. I thought in the mythic part of my brain whales were some kind of untouchable sacred wild mystery—not so—all life is equally finite and fragile. Humans are the only (proven) beings that understand we will die. Imagine an animal that was conscious of ocean-sized consequential actions.
The destruction we cause to our world is so resoundingly irresponsible and shallow—and the effects are more complex than a simple, closeted mind can digest. Yet for convenience and comfort we lose a whalish portion of our very souls. I find the ego-centric, sniveling cultureless wads of entitled human materialistic conformists to be an affront. The excuses of lackadaisical nihilism are endless and not a one is coherent or justifiable. I cannot proscribe anything easier than mass suicide for the enrichment of our planet, but sailing has taught me of flowing unity and stern natural paths. So I say this: go and get very uncomfortable. Go lose that useless ego-spitting lard in your Sense Of Adventure and experience something that makes you feel very small and precarious. (Though those reading this are dear to me, they are the very luminous, witty souls undamaged by my unbridled verve. So. ) I think if people got more happiness from the natural earth without cursing paroxysms at a soggy shoe or a pang in their gut they might even be enlarged to the verge of understanding an inkling of what happens beyond the borders of their own skin. Once it's hilariously miserable, you can always keep the enlightenment that you had to earn... that's the problem, making the feeling stick around isn't it? You are still looking at the screen? There’s a dead grey whale drifting to the bony shores of your world. Very fondly and respectably yours as always.