A View from the Wheelhouse

The Angel of Pole Pass

Posted on September 30, 2013October 1, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

We left Jones Island with the start of the ebb on a calm, overcast morning and headed south-east toward our first way point at Steep Point on Orcas Island’s East side. I’d plotted our course through one of the San Juan Island’s most treacherous passages the day before. Our track was to take us into the middle of the labyrinthine Wasp Islands, through Harney Channel to East Sound in time for our dance. I’d cross-referenced Captain Jack’s and the Canadian Currant Atlas and, with a sharp pencil, drawn our course on the chart with the way points and estimated arrivals times.

I was actually a bit proud of my fore-sight, and hoped it might inspire in Lily a greater trust in my navigational skill. Lily had given me a T-shirt that said sharp and focused. Maybe she thought it might help.

When we reached Steep Point, the next way point appeared on the GPS screen directing us somewhere south-west into some nasty-looking rocks. Since our intended track was south-east, I knew something was wrong. Major anxiety set in.

The ebb was taking us east past a small Island to starboard, while ahead a few miles, was a small opening toward which a sailboat was motoring.

At Lily’s suggestion (she was remaining unusually calm in all this,) I followed. As we neared, the pass actually appeared smaller. A torrent of green water flowed over the jagged rocks to starboard, when suddenly I saw a woman in the cockpit of a C-Dory next to us beckoning with a reassuring look and a gentle movement of her arms.

I’d gotten only a fleeting glimpse of her, but her radiant image will forever be etched in my memory. The waving motion with which she guided us rocked with her boat like a movements of a Sufi Zikr. It was an angelic vision guiding Old Hand’s errant crew through the twisted channels of the world toward salvation; to chasten pride of seamanship and forgetfulness of the true purpose of our voyage-of which we might lose sight while navigating the labyrinthine island passes. Though our “navigation” of Pole Pass may have been unintentional, it reminded me of our deeper intention.

After all, we are emissaries of the Dances of Universal Peace, come to bring the message of unity as taught by Hazrat Inyat Khan and Samuel Lewis-to bring the wisdom traditions of all faiths into full body awareness through the ancient tradition of sacred dance.

Thank you bright Angel of Pole Pass. For you there shall always be an honored page in the tattered log of Old Hand.

Reef-net fishing

Posted on September 24, 2013September 30, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

The sky turns red/orange over the hills west of Fisherman Bay.

I row out to the narrow finger of rock that protects the entrance, to photograph the rough-hewn, skeletal remains of reef-net boats along the shore.

They say Reef-netting is one of the oldest forms of fishing. In ancient times, fishing was continuous with the sacred traditional ceremonies. These ceremonies were held with elaborate theatrics.

The simple act of fishing was performed with a cherished respect for salmon spirit that ensured their annual return. Everyday life was interwoven with the sacred like the twisted, cedar bark nets they so cunningly wrought and watched over through the centuries.

A reef-netter still floats by the western shore, its tall, stark ladder inverted upon the surface of the bay.

The water’s surface is the boundary, the imaginal space between worlds of height and depth. The sinuous patterns that shimmer over it’s surface are reflected in the curvilinear shapes of Salish art. It evokes the intermediate realm of dreams and myth; a place not found among the mystic way points of GPS. It is where the first salmon people hied up the narrow channels with the flood and into human consciousness.

On reef-netters, the watcher (in earliest times, the tribal chief) would ascend the rough, cedar ladder high above the bow and intone the quiet prayer honoring the annual return of the salmon.

While rowing in, I seem to hear an old diesel engine that drums faintly over the the inland sea like the rhythm of the universal heartbeat. Or is it the spirits of dead fishermen still drumming over the waters?

Welcome, Swimmers.

Upon seeing the salmon enter the net below, the robed and cone-hatted watcher, stark against the red sky, sings to his mates below:

Lift, lift.

As one, the crew raises the net, the catch glistens in fading sunlight

Welcome, Brothers.

These old songs are sung in another place than that found on the yellowed, dog-eared charts of linear time. The primordial drama is still re-enacted upon the weathered scaffold of artifice in the winter dancing houses of ancient memory.

Old Hand's northern voyage, videos

East Sound storm

Posted on September 23, 2013September 30, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Lily hurt her foot when we docked at East Sound for our dance. Then yesterday, a storm blew up from Southeast, blowing a good 35 knots with gusts to 40. Old Hand took a hammering at the public dock while Lily lay below getting seasick. But the local EMT team were there in no time to get her off the boat, up to the nearby Oddfellows Hall where we had a wonderful event despite Lily’s injury. It was a sweet circle praying for peace in this stormy world.

Old Hand's northern voyage

Septemptrionic Voyage

Posted on September 17, 2013September 17, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

In the mid 70’s I had a studio in Eugene. Nearby was a pioneer cemetery where stood a tall, gray weathered tomb which housed an early patriarch of the Oregon Territory named Septembus Spencer. While I won’t deny my memory may embellish the facts, this outlandish moniker has stayed with me all these years. Now I find that one of Willamette valley venerable line of Spencers had made his way further north to this stormy spit on Lopez Island’s east shore.

As though by a master sculptor’s hand, Equinoctial storms have carved cyphers into the rough stonework of the storehouse. Apples still fall from the trees he planted on the grassy knoll.

Septembus comes from Septentrio, which is Latin for North.

On this gravel spit formed with perfect symmetry by alternating currents are seen middens of a tribal fish camp that had been used for over 3,000 years.

Though I bear no relation to the Eugene and Lopez Spencers, I find it strange to arrive at the most northern outpost of those Northwest settlers-that venerable line whose family tomb I saw in my earlier days. It is their most, so to speak, Septentrionic point.

I take heart in knowing that the same northern, wayfaring spirit calling us toward these enchanted Isles inspired the peregrinations of T. W. Spencer-that the same pole star he set his course by is the way point toward which Old Hand shapes her course.

I was taught by a Cowlitz elder that the cardinal directions are more than physical points on the compass, but spiritual states which must be embarked upon with full awareness of all their various qualities.

Black Elk once said the center of the world was Harney (was this the same hawkish general who tried to incite war with England over a dead pig?) Peak in South Dakota. Black Elk went on to add that the center is everywhere. It’s the same awareness that lead Jesus to sing to his round-dance on his crucifixion eve:

“The universe is inside the dancer.”

The tide flows into the lagoon at full flood like the rushing green flow of the Willamette River by which I sat staring so long that, when I rose, the solid banks seemed to move with the same fluid motion as the water.

The sacred land is everywhere-is already won. It is somewhere in Harney Channel (Harney again!) The Center is in the old Odd fellows Hall on Orcas Island where we hold our Dance of Universal Peace on this Sunday. The universe revolves around Old Hand’s keel as we voyage to the spiritual state of North; to honor the wisdom teachings of all faiths that ever points us toward the true polestar.

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Old Hand’s voyage to the San Juans 3

Posted on September 13, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

Lily and I have been making flyers and organizing our September 22nd Dance of Universal Peace in East Sound, Orcas Island. Our voyage has a direction beside that which the winds take us.

From the vantage point of the Doctor’s Office coffee shop (it was an actual doctor’s office), I watch all manner of craft and float planes enter and depart Friday Harbor. Old Hand lies anchored in 9 fathoms off the Oceanographic laboratories on the north east shore.

We are leaving later today for either Spencer Spit or Fisherman’s Bay on the north end of Lopez Island before our event. it’s not really our event, but part of a tradition-a spiritual community that exists all over the world.

Here’s Lily leading a song/dance she wrote based on the Amitabha meditation. I may have gotten a little to free with the effects, but you can maybe get the jist of it.

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Old hand’s voyage to the San Juan Islands 1

Posted on September 12, 2013September 13, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

This is my post in some time. I’ve been busy preparing for our trip north to the San Juans.

Again, our crossing of the infamous Straits was placidly uneventful. This is fine by me as I’d rather get my adventure in other ways than getting slammed by the huge waves that can travel all the way into the eastern Strait of Juan de Fuca. The pictures ~~of the huge waves that can travel all the way into the eastern Strait of Juan de Fuca~~ have struck my heart with a cold dread. Then there’s the fog which can veil the looming menace of beasts like this bearing down on Old Hand at 18 knots.

Musings, Old Hand's northern voyage

Maybe I’ll write about the Sea

Posted on August 22, 2013August 24, 2013 by Dogfish Bay

I rebed pad eyes by day and rewrite the wandering craft of my prose after dark.

Our plan is to leave September 5^th on the new moon-the time propitious for undertaking our voyage north through Saratoga Passage, by way of the Swinomish Channel, to the funky wharf town of La Conner. We then cross Rosario strait into the San Juan Islands.

I paint the deck a battleship gray that colored my 50’s childhood with visions of martial efficiency projected in the gaunt, strident scenes of the Great War.

I read Look Homeward Angel, marveling at the luscious prose. Who are these characters that populate Thomas Wolf’s stories? The stone carver, grave ornament maker, who had an Angelic vision as he chugged west to die among granite hills.

O lost!

The refrain Is heard throughout the story-as if our prodigal hero was born lost in this juicy world whose co-ordinates had been firmly laid with ancestral rites and arcane laws of property.

I’ll bring back McWhirr to tell of the Sea. I miss the old guy during long spells of writer’s block-as if he were my inner navigator admonishing me to hold a steady course through the endless watches over the dim sea. It is his Saturnine compass that scribes the boundary of possible outcomes. Only his stentorian oaths can direct the wandering track of my narrative along a course that is true.

As the wind freshens, strange voices call my name. A woman’s voice beckons over the slimy, creaking sea, and vanishes when I turn to hear. It’s as if she called softly from in the groaning, weathered piles that sway with the tides; when I least expect a visitation from the other world.

I hear faint drumming that-like a star that is seen only peripherally-falls silent when I listen. Are they ghostly drummers chanting over the bright waters of Port Madison on a moonlit night. Grandfather said their voices still sound over the waters, calling from the other shore. Haya, haya, haya-the song carries on the cool breeze.

How does my own story fit in here? How woven into the warp of necessary fiction? Shadows ebb blue violet as blackness rakes the mudflats between two tides-between two lights. Raccoons paw the foreshore where starfish glow. A heron is perched on Reah’s dockhouse like he owned the place.

I change writing pads so my crimped hand may expand in florid loops beyond the web of type-into fictional streams that draw me toward a vague landfall in some maritime dream of adventure. I’ll write about the sea, about Old Hand’s tortuous passages into far reaches of the Skagit Channel. As ensign of our great endeavor, we shall festoon the masthead with laurel, and call upon the gods to bless our voyage. It is toward the faint sound of chanting drums that we set our course, toward an ever-receding song dimly heard from the north.

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