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.
I rebed pad eyes by day and rewrite the wandering craft of my prose after dark.
Our plan is to leave September 5th 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.
The Sierra Echo buoy flashes a mile off the starboard beam as I sheet in for a close, starboard reach. Through the rain-pelted wheelhouse windows, I see lightening streak diagonally into the black face of Foulweather Bluff like the bronze spears of invading armies.
“Steady lad, tis a mere capful of wind.” Says McWhirr.
“It’s a big head of storm to fill such a cap, Captain.”
We are just able to lay the Foulweather buoy. The bell rings dolefully as it’s black profile sways wildly off the starboard beam.
I remember that blackness from long before, far away…
You gods of souls who dwell in endless night,
Abrojos, watercolor by Craig Spencer
grant that I may tell wonders of regions void of light.
Abreojos was a small Baja fishing village of plywood shacks. Hollow waves broke over a razor-sharp reef, and the afternoon offshore winds blew rainbow rooster tails over the backs of pitching surf. The name meant open eyes; and the longer I stayed in the palm-roofed fish hut, waiting for the big swell, the more my eyes opened to it’s stark beauty.The name was also warning to keep a steady watch, and the iron keel of a wrecked schooner high on the point was testament to the fierce chubasco winds that hammered that arid shore.
Abreojos Graveyard. Watercolor by Craig Spencer
The moonlight bleached the low, rounded dunes and cast angular shadows of lobster pots half buried in the sand. I descended the vague path to the graveyard south of the village. Gaudy tombs of fisher-men stood in the pallid light. Enclosed in the florid, stucco niche’s were relics of their earthly lives: an action figure, cheap guitar, and the blessed baseball glove.
My shadow rose up the moonlit dunes as I slowly approached the cemetery gate. Night breezes swirled with vaporous shades who mended starry nets and sang the Mexican Birthday song:
O LadyGuadalupe, O Lady Guadalupe…
It was your image come in dreams, dear father, that set my course toward your dark shore. In a dream garage sale I found a clue that led to your habitation. Three times I have tried to clasp your hand. Three times my vain words have left me reaching for empty air. Like you, I gasp to articulate an ancestral rage, and long to transmute the leaden ore of miss-shapen phrases into avowals of love from the hearts golden core.
“Fall off a few points west. There’s a deep-draft bearing down from north-east.”
McWhirr’s profile is etched by lightening against the bulkhead.
“A few points west it is, sir.
On we plunge into darkness, Old Hand’s bow lifts high and then falls with a jolt into the black troughs of the seas. The wind screams in the rigging as a fan of spray flies off the storm jib in an arc of phosphorescent light. Seas advance, white-capped, like a phalanx of militant headstones called up from Gabriel’s northern gate to defend the ramparts of Dis.
George Lakoff has retired as Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. His newest book "The Neural Mind" is now available.
A View from the Wheelhouse 