9-19-10 1130 Green House Woods Hole MA USA Well, the sun is shining brightly. Earlier the little dog found her own small patch, and was sitting in it, blinking and digesting the pieces of bacon she had scrounged from the waffle breakfasters. Jun Won, recognizing a deficit in the house (she who also recognized we needed a string hammock) sent a waffle maker, with all the latest in electronic controls beeps and safeguards, that I still managed to get stuck to somehow. But only briefly. It`s really quite wonderful.
This after a morning kayak from John's boathouse, in its new cleaned out state. It`s quite wonderful to roll back the door, after walking down the long stringer of boards that leads across the stretch of salt water marsh that lies between the road and the boathouse. The sun is shining noisly into the open seaward end of the structure, which is made post and beam style to support the weight of the system that used to hoist the motorboat that the boathouse was originally designed for. It was a water balance system, where you pump water into a ballast tank that then provides the power to hoist up hte boat. Now its floored over 3/4 of the way out, and the floor is clear of all projects or materials. Two kayaks on a rack against the wall, and lots of light. The swallows have all fledged or fallen to their deaths, and are out in the world, eating insects as fast as they can to store up for the trip south. I was in a cloud of them out along the bike bath yesterday, soaring and dipping, computing three dimensional trajectories with an ease that makes you really respect what a cerebellum is capable of. Because its the ocean, I always get geared up with spray skirt and PFD. I guess I would forgo it on a lake, but for moving water, it seems the respectful thing to do. At 6:30 the sun is bright on the water, and its absolutely flat calm, a flood tide. There are cormorants diving silently all around, and scrambling out of the way when they surface within my alarm radius. The terns have flown off to winter quarters, I guess. Ospreys too; I miss their peeping cries/ And I saw my first Eider ducks of the year, the winter mussel eater who will eventually be living in large shoals of birds out in the Hole.
I came East around Devils Foot and squirted through the current at the end and came up to where the main current sweeps around the point where this years ospreys fledged in the straggly snaggly stick nest built on the navigation marker overhead. No warning peeps anymore, and I punched out into the current, and then ferried across Middle Ledge and spun into the eddy on the Eastern end of Pine Island (the last pines were washed out to sea in the 1938 hurricane). There were two guys anchored in a boat 'chunking'...fishing by cutting chunks of bait and letting them stream out in the current...and one caught a good sized bluefish as I hung there, looking at the brightness of it all. 'Damm,another Bluefish', was all he said. This kind of brightness, meaning low humidity and no pollution, happens in the fall..you can see water towers across Buzzards Bay in Rhode Island, and on the Vineyard near Tashmoo. And the rocks, looking like whales swimming in the current, are more visible, as the plankton count diminishes. Swung back into the current and ferried back and forth across the channel, feeling good to use those push/pull muscles after mostly walking and pushing elevator buttons in London. And then bouncing across the current back into the gutter between Devils Foot and Pensance, and swirling downcurrent back to the boathouse. And swimming...the water just cold enough to let you know times are achanging.
A nice reentry after the London trip. Now it's later, the 6 hp Tohatsu motor that pushed me all the way back against a 25 mph wind has been cleaned in freshwater and ready for a long winters nap, and Fuji is wondering if there isn't time for just one more walk.
Yesterday Sala announced she wanted to go for a slow uncomplicated boat ride. It started uncomplicatedly enoough, although the George B was judged to be way too messy. The boat, all 14 feet of her open self is now tied up on a line as part of the MBL boat club. So we coiled an anchor rope, and generally spiffed her up. The automatic bilge pump leaves a few inches in the bottom. I planned to sluice those out by running the boat at speed for a few moments outside in the harbor. Out there, I cracked open the and the boat started slapping ..banging really..on the small waves in the harbor. I must have remembered at some neuronic/synaptic level that Sala doesnt like that effect of speed, but what else was I thinking...my own agenda, of course, trying to get the rain water out. Sala asked me to slow down, and I was slow to respond. I was oogling the brightness I suppose, and also had to look around to check on other traffic. That meant she asked again, way to rapidly, I thought, and with more urgency. That, of course made me not want to respond at all...Why?...or more to the point, what was I thinking. I had good reason for going fast, and there was no danger. It was just her damm prefference for no pounding. But in truth, she had asked for the boat trip, and there was no reason to go fast. , How come I didnt just listen, and respond? How come, quite contrarily, I felt resentful? Well, I did slow down, but was still feeling that when we got around the Eastern end of the island, past our three lobster pots bobbing on the bright smooth flooding tide, (yes, and I had forgotten the bait to re-bait them after two weeks sitting unbaited) . So I guess I this was not actually the right time to try a cooperative behavior like landing a heavy skiff on an ocean beach with a swell running. I thought I was calm and expansive enough, as I explained that I wanted to try to drop an anchor, and then let us back to just touch the beach. Of course this involved details of ropes and pullings that I wasnt able to adequately explain to sala. I did manage to get Sala off the boat and onto the beach, but I had given her a tangled rope, and it wasn't clear what needed to be done. So now I am shouting, the boat is scraping, the waves are breaking, and the anchor was too light to really catch firmly. So the boat kept dragging and beaching itself. Exactly the kind of thrashing around that upsets Sala. Exactly what she hadn't wanted.
Later, safely off the beach and on the way into Lackeys Bay to go hrough the gutter into Hadleys Harbor, I cut the motor and we talked it out. After all was said, the important item is intent. If my intent is really to try to accomplish the objective that Sala has asked for, things usually turn out ok. If, instead, I feel free to modify it, and my intent becomes accmplishing the slightly off target objectives that I have re-set, they generally dont. Exactly how I can get from ' slow uncomplicated boat ride' to 'turn up the throttle', or 'try to beach a boat using a new anchor'....well, as you have just heard, it happens. And another thing Sala points out, subtle but very important. Wanting to have a slow uncomplicated ride' ONCE doesnt mean that I ALWAYS have to go slow, or NEVER can land on that beach, but just to really try, if we are actualizing her plan, to have the intent to do that, not something else.
And so, the London trip is over, and who knows that was the most important learning.
Next, Ethiopia? Why not.
alan
No comments:
Post a Comment