12-3-2010 0835 Buzzards Bay Ave, Woods Hole MA Today we are NOT driving to Princeton NJ. And the day after, we will NOT be continuing on, not South along the BlueRidge Parkway, and then later not to Athens, then not West to Santa Fe and not ultimately Carmel by the Sea. We will not crank up the La Pavoni expresso maker where it perches on some formaldehyde degassing bureau or deskette in a dog friendly motel. We will not be looking for antique malls from our 70 mph superhighway or from the 45 mph blue highway that we happen to be on at any given time. We will not be correcting Alan's driving speed when he becomes involved in an explanation of anything at all, and we will not be exasperated by Sala's tone of voice that we imagine to be angry with us, but is actually only being emphatic. Fuji the little dog, now 2 years old and a veteran of such travels, will not be surveying the passing scene from a perch on top of the load that somehow always fills the back seat to the brim. And she will not be stamping around on her sharp little feet in Sala's lap when we commence our onward journey each morning.
No.
Well, just when you think you have a plan, thar she goes, out the window, up in flames, into the ashbin of history!!
'Bout noontimes on Thanksgiving, as we were tussling with our roof rack outside 18 Mast Road, a brown Camry piloted by a young driver came downhill too fast and slapped our little grey Prius around quite a bit. We were aghast, but un-injured as was the Camry driver, so dont worry your pretty little heads about that!
In ER work, its always a bad sign when an accident victim's eyes are pointing in different directions.
In cars, its a bad sign when the drive wheels point in different directions. And I didnt like that expensive white smoke when I started it up to try to pull loose from the tree the car eventually was pushed into.
Now, a week later and knowing much more about the details of paying your policy on time, reading the fine print, double jeopardy for taxation, rules and regulations concerning automobile loans and registrations, the effect of monthly payments on credit ratings and how to remove a crippled vehicle from a small tree without damaging the tree, the faithful little Prius has gone off on a longbed tow truck, and we have tickets to fly JetBlue from Boston next week.
As Kurt V would say, 'so it goes'.
So this latest dancing lesson from the higher power is being interpreted here in Woods Hole as an invitation to slim down on what must be transported to the West Coast, and to spend time with friends and enjoy the fall.
And it is gorgeous around here. The colors are fading, its true. Fuji's gingery redness can be seen again now, as she darts into the woods in pursuit of squirrels (and in her horrified parents imagination, the clutches of the slavering yellow eyed, cruel jawed coy-wolves that are lying in wait for her). The leaves have gone to brown. The branches, bereft, wave their pointing fingers against a grey and troubled sky. Or against an incredible blue. My moods fall and rise with these changes. Perhaps the humidity has something to do with it. Perhaps its the incident sunlight lying on the fallen leaves, momentarily giving them back the color that time and the chemistry of death has taken from them.
Perhaps my moods follow the catspaws of wind scudding across Great Harbor as I paddle out for one more trip in the kayak. I finally have gear that pretty much works..double mittens and chemical hand warmers being at the heart of the matter. Passles and flocks of scoter and eider ducks make a sussurus of noise rising from the water as I come around the bottom of Ram island and turn East into the ebbing tide that flows between Ram and Devils Foot. Its shallow here..some years there are mussels, but at this time its only banks and mounds of crepidula sp., the boat shell. Crepidula, you may remember, is one of those defiantly transgender animules...they grow one on the next, the young one starting out as guys, and then transforming into gals. ( You might want to know that officially that makes them 'protandrous hermaphrodites'. And you thought your sex life was complicated!!)
I paddle on through the shallow part, and am sucked towards the head of Devils Foot island by the current flowing out of Great Harbor and into The Hole towards Buzzards Bay. Across the water, the outlines of familiar rocks of Red Ledge are reshaped by hauled out harbor seals...and one big enough to be a Grey seal. They spend the winter around here, something I never knew as a child because they are gone by the time summer folks arrive. They are habituated to motor boats, but raise their heads, and slide off into the water when I am still a quarter mile away. Perhaps they can see my imagined and historically correct harpoon. Who knows a seal's thoughts?
The boathouse I depart from is undergoing a transformation. For years, its been the base of operations of John, my mentor and friend. His methods of boatbuilding are a mixture of brilliant improvisation, advanced design, and impossible dreams. His latest construction has now been sawn up and removed to a better land, and the structure, open to the harbor and originally a 'drive in' boathouse, is being redone for kayaking and the pleasures of the harbor. But John's credentials do not rest on his boatbuilding. For years, he pioneered biotelemetry, using his skills with physics and electronics to place electronic 'bugs' that reported metabolic function on un-vivisected animals from cormorants to whales, and most swimming mammals and birds in between. Unlike romantics driven by a need to communicate with sea mammals, John wanted to understand how they do it..how can an elephant seal dive to more than 4000 feet and stay submerged for an hour? http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/4277631 He wanted to understand how whales could be so big. So his stories range from trading a case of scotch for a blue whales heart on board a Norwegian whaling ship (the only way to measure the vital parameters of the heart of this largest mammal) to calling into question the so called 'diving bradycardia reflex' by recording that cormorants hand raised to be unafraid of humans did not slow their hearts as the terrified seals and porpoises tied to boards and held underwater did).
So I think of John when the wild seals slide back into their element, to casually not breathe for a very long time, and of John's challenging assertion: Mammals are the size we are because of the chemical properties of oxygen. Think about that, ye learned students of physiology. Its deep. How can shrews be tiny, and whales huge? How can the shrews heart beat over 1000 times per minute and the whales, 5? John believes that you don't need any fancy biological mathematics. We are all just doing the best we can with oxygen, a wonderful molecule, but one which neither diffuses nor dissolves well in our body fluids.
The Hole is its usual fitful startful place, eddies and currents running every which way, althought the tide charts show a steady ebb. The red of the channel marking 'nun' bouy and the green 'can' creates ripply colors across the water. The light tan of the grasses and the red of the poison oak leaves on Nonamessett gleam in the incident sun. Another flight of ducks decides its time to move; the noise is the first I am aware of them. There are coyote tracks, one large, one set smaller, on the sandy beach across the Hole.
My upwind glove is getting soaked. Time to start back, upwind. Now the spray is on my face. There are no boats, only mooring floats left in the harbor to feel the cold caress..winter coming.
So...tomorrow the bike path, a different kind of travel.
saludos
Alan
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