Ready or Not

I barely remember the early morning over 13 years ago when J and I untied our little boat and set off into the darkness. We had shoved all the extra gear into whatever cubbies and lockers we could at midnight. We’d stashed the last few cans of tuna under bunks and topped off the 40-gallon water tank at one a.m. Our single side band radio was nestled in blankets under the settee next to a lifeless bubble-wrapped solar panel. The rigging wasn’t quite tuned, the outboard rarely started on the 1^st or 20^th try, we didn’t have charts for our entire trip and we sure didn’t know the waters. We’d only sailed on our boat Gitane a few times before embarking on a six-thousand-mile journey from Ensenada, Mexico to New York City.

We weren’t ready to untie those lines, we had dozens of more projects to complete, San Diego was on fire, family told us not to go. We could have used a plethora of excuses to sensibly wait one more day, but somewhere around 3am we slipped off those lines anyway and sailed off that dock.

As I get ready for a little ole race to Alaska on a boat I’ve only sailed a few times, Being Ready is on my mind. As is knowing deep down that Being Ready is not a Real Thing. It doesn’t matter how many energy bars we have stowed or how many rowing workouts I’ve done or how comfortable I am pulling up the jib on the tiny bow of this trimaran, I won’t be ready. 

And yet I am.

Ready is less a list of to-dos than it is allowance of forward motion. Instead of saying ready, maybe I should say willing. I am open to challenge. I am confident that we can handle what comes our way. And by handle I do not mean fight or defeat or stay alive, I mean that if I am willing (ready) to stay present in the moment (which the sea is extraordinarily wonderful at cultivating, that presence), I can trust that I can be in the flow of whatever happens.

Hoping that flow is not a whirlpool.
Yet that too. 

Not going, as has been suggested by dear caring souls with more arguably more sense than I, will not teach me these lessons of trust. Doing something that is wholly unknown (other than that sailing ocean birds sunset bioluminescence whales un-fucking-believeable beauty part- I know that) is a way to remind myself that every day we throw off the docklines and get out of bed. Or at least most days. We sail into the unknown with every conversation on the street or at the breakfast table and during every acceleration in the car catapulting us into the next moment, the next interaction. Nothing is fully planned and executed exactly. Planning is inherently ephemeral. Our dreams and expectations never quite line up with our reality.

We are penciled self-portraits blurred by the hands that draw them.

The bigger the decisions or the more outlandish the adventure, I’d venture to say that the chasm between expectation and reality widens more significantly, obviously, acutely.

Is that what I fear? Falling into that chasm of the unknown, swooping swallows and flying fish circling and slashing?

I realize that this is commitment. Commitment to getting out of bed in the morning and being in relationship with others and going on a crazy fucking boat trip for no point other than to do it. This is trust and love and life. Living. Untying what holds us back and sailing out of the harbor each and every day into the unknown and feeling every wave and wash of terror and gratitude. It can look like this trip or like marriage and kids and staying in one place for more than a year.

Adventure is relative.
It is trust.

Ready? Sure.
For blurred lines and whales breath and swooping swallows and presence.  
Willing to welcome commitment and contentment.
Open to the challenge of the unknown (so everything). Ready.

Coming Home

I can feel the quiet seep into my bones, muscles aching from a day in trains and buses and planes and shuttles and cabs. The damp green smell of the woods and earth, the light shining on the porch to greet me. I climb the stairs to my room as the house sleeps. Six weeks isn’t long but long enough to forget details and invent a whole other life. I hadn’t thought about my room in weeks, about the driftwood whales and shells on an alter and the tree that scratches hello at my window that had green leaves and whispered of summer when I left and is now an orchestra of brown pods shaking in the autumnal wind. But in the night I couldn’t even see the tree. 

In my big bed I dream of orcas. It was if they were welcoming me back to the northwest, reminding me of my place and my blessed vulnerability when I float quiet and still, orca jaws rubbing and nipping at my side. They swim in the wide deep expanses that consume my mind with shadows and multi-toned movement, consume this land and create a shore licked with cold salty tongues.

I wake to soft conversations and the smell of onions and eggs in hot oil. I shake free of fins and waves. I stare at the trees outside until I throw off the quilts and stretch in the coolness of my room. The smell of cooking mingles with coffee and fades. The conversations below cease as days in the wider world begin, doors open and shut, I imagine boots slipped quietly onto wool-socked feet. I walk onto the landing and catch my breath at the outer beauty of the old barn in the soft gray of a cloudy morning. All I can hear are frogs and birds and a brushing of motion that could be tree or car or water but I cannot tell and do not need to know. 

Downstairs a guitar rests upon a wall as if ready to be picked up and strummed, an avocado sits half eaten on the counter, coffee is still warm in the press. Signs of life and simplicity that I have missed. Tables tumble forth with eggplant and onions, apples and garlic. The abundance of this place! I can’t help but smile as I brew my tea and suddenly hear the songs and words that have been stoppered by city fences break lose into the foreground of my mind. Oh that’s right. They need space, too. The space I had briefly forgotten exists, like the spiderwebbed cracks in the wall of my room. It is like waking up from a dream with the relief and knowing that even if both worlds are real (orcas (taxi cabs? A city life?) nipping at your heart), this is the one that feels good and true and alive.   

This is the Home I have missed and craved and fear and love. And now all I have to do is actually Be Here. That’s all. And that is simply the most difficult part for me. I am slowly realizing that my success lay not in the achievement of some outwardly goal like the city (entrenched in my brain) wants me to believe, wants me to stay busy running after, but in the act of allowing myself to Be Here Right Now. 
This is what the space allows. This is my challenge of finding Home. Finding me. 

I melt into the quiet as the fog lifts and I breathe in the Now, sigh out the Then.

And breathe in again.

Ocean Wings

Ocean stretches salty paws to the horizon, a fur of seaweed and sunken shells deep in the hide. 
Land growls in the absence and claws at my back, drawing my thoughts to marshy fields and jagged tree trunks searching for blue sky through a tangled pelt of clouds. 

Time twists and breaks, flexes like the bow of this pummeled boat. 
I strain my dreams through the sieve of stars overhead and what falls remains to be slumbered upon. 

Here in my hands the wings of a fish tremble and push, a curve pressing into the palms behind bloody knuckles as translucent bones shift and spread. A gasp and release, a shriek and a sigh. Into the water into the night we move forward together in leaps and glides and a jauntiness I never knew I held. You teach me well. 

I wipe the sun streaks from my eyes and let the moon wash over me its secret language of reflection, illumination from source unseen. The song has just begun in the quiet of the dark and I hold the notes between waves, between screaming gusts, between fingers that can no longer grasp this place. 

We understand each other: the dive and flight, the relinquishment of time and holding of grace. Fins and feet, whale jaws and rhubarb roots. None of it makes sense until I stand (swim) in the middle of it all and let it go. You (I) tumble back into the blackness, trusting whatever is after you (me) drives us forward and calls us to the slippery descent back Home.  

Predator or Pilgrim

I did it to preserve your life, keep you safe, shield you from the outside, I swear. 

And look what happened. 

They got in. You are gone.

On a rainy Friday I clomped over the dying grass and fallen evergreen boughs. Not ever-green when they fade into yellow-brown in the field. I stepped into the garden with sticks and fabric and clothespins in my hand. I was doing you a favor before the big snow.

Snow! 20 degrees would disappear in the night and droplets would turn to slushlets would turn to clumps of white then the most delicate whispers of clouds compressed into a speck on my upturned cheek. I would be up at 3am with spring on my mind, step out in nightclothes and boots to glance up at the swirling soft water above and over at you hidden under a white winter dress.

I wish I could say it was the fault of the clothespins I used to patch and pinch your coverings. 
No, it was my lack of thought that did you in. There I was on that Friday before Saturday snow, mittens wet and heavy as I pushed poles into the earth and unraveled fabric over the newly made bridges. I placed rocks and boards and bits of dirt on the edges, clipped the spare pieces together. I wiped rain out of my eyes and wiggled my toes in cold boots. I looked around at the bare blueberry shrubs and the straw covered garlic bed. I breathed in slowly and smiled at my work. At least some of you would be protected, I thought. The other kale of your brethren, well, they would have to fend for themselves under the ice. The sun set and I couldn’t save you all.

Saturday morning, snowday, the sun ricocheted off the whiteness of the valley. I squinted into the stillness and tromped through the powder. Snow! I hadn’t seen snow in years and I was as giddy as a five year old in a mud puddle as I stomped and stopped and listened, placed handfuls of snow on my tongue, marveled at the fences adorned with steep white peaks.

I walked to where you stood. Your house was partially toppled and covered with inches of hardening crystals. I brushed them off as best I could before my hands turned yellowy blue. I found where the ice had weighed down and torn the fabric. It was too stiff to mend. But you were still safe underneath all that fabric, all that snow.

I waited until the following afternoon to return and when I did your home came alive with movement. What was going on in there? A pair of wings, a trembling body tumbled out of the tear and disappeared into the woods in a flash of brown and gray. I could hear more birds inside. Nice! I thought. Now the birds have a place to keep warm! 
I slowly crept back to the garden gate, not wanting to scare them away.

I did not know they were feasting upon your limbs.

I checked on you again the following day, checked to see if the birds were still snuggling against your greenery. No birds, no greenery. Just thin stems of what you used to be. All of this preparation and effort to keep you safe, to shelter you: it was preparation for your demise. 

Maybe you’ll grow back. Maybe. But probably not. You are tired, broken, spent.

It makes me wonder how often I do this. How many times I carefully erect barriers to keep the cold out, keep the growing bits of me safe only to attract a haven for my predators. The kale plants outside may be frozen, but at least the leaves are intact, they will thaw when it warms up. Most likely they will survive a bit longer. This cold actually makes them sweeter. 

The ones inside are mangled and ragged. My best intentions gone awry. Or am I feeding the universe in a different way? Maybe those birds were actually the ones I was meant to protect and I just thought it was the kale that I needed to keep safe, nourished, warm? 

(As if I can protect! As if Nature needs me to keep beings safe!)

In the grand plan, unbeknownst to me, perhaps I was building a home for the birds instead of a refuge for the dying kale whose season was done, a season I attempted to prolong unnaturally. 
I attracted what I had thought were predators but were actually pilgrims. 

And thus killed the kale. 
So in the future do I do nothing? What does Doing Nothing look like? 
Or do I do everything, trusting that my actions serve what needs to grow even if the outcome seems to be a contradiction of the preparation?

Yes. And more of yes. And more of ice tearing open the covers and exposing the wilting within. And more of wings and warm beating hearts fluttering in the snow. And more yes and more moonlight on the sparkling fields and strange words uttered to the garden posts after days alone in the trees and wind and white. 

And more yes and darkness and growth. 

And yes. I am sorry kale and I am not. 

Among the Giants

  

I wander over frost-crunchy meadows and marvel at maple leaves like snowflakes frozen in their gorgeous rust-colored decay.

Quietness settles over the valley as I weave towards the shore. 

The mountains shake with sunlight and stretch their dreams into the still blue sky. 

I pull my scarf more tightly around my chin, pull my hat down over my ears; I have not tasted winter in many years. But it is not yet winter, it is still the fall and I have a long descent ahead of me: nights of clouds obscuring those bright memories of light overhead, mist snaking through the dying grass, murders of crows screeching behind a curtain of early sunset. 

My breath comes in fogbanks, my laugh a blast of warning to those off my weaving bow. 

I see Tahoma on the horizon, a watery chasm between us, drift wood reaching spindly arms for the snowy peaks encircling this island. 

I walk these beaches, through these woods, through my door knowing I am Home. 

For now, forever, for as long as the island wants me, I am here and I am grateful.