A Journal: Musings of a Yankee Moderate
(from entry on Things Worth Remembering)
Sunset comes and goes and we are not yet in harbor from our kayaking trip off the coast of Harpswell, Maine. Suddenly we are surrounded by seals that seem to be escorting us into port safely. When we had sighted them earlier on a rocky wedge of an island a couple miles out, the big guy spooked and hustled all 40 or so of his group into the water not to be seen again during the day. But on the way in, just as the sun goes down and the reds and pinks faded to grays and darkness begins to swallow our sight of land, bare heads poke up all around and between us.
One comes so close, he startles Raul who almost flips his kayak. I start to tease Raul by shouting, “Shark! Shark!” but stop when I see his face and reassure him. His concern is for his girlfriend Bear who has exhausted herself on this trip and is behind him barely able to paddle. The seals apparently sense this and they surround her. Debbie has two near her, as do I, plus the big guy from earlier in the day who emerges in the growing space between Larry, our fearless leader who is hell bent to get to shore, and I who cannot begin to catch up to him. The big guy is huge, lighter in color, with long whiskers and big eyes. He snorts, and then rolls over on his back, his flippers in the air, and I am entranced by his antics. The seals stay with us until we reach the shore. How cool is that?
A month later I tell a friend at work about it, about the almost mystical feel of that experience, and she tells me that I must see a movie called “The Secrets of Roan Inish,” but she won’t tell me why. I have trouble finding it to rent anywhere, so I go to Amazon.com and purchase it. The mysteriousness and spirituality of my adventure with seals reverberates in Irish folklore and is revisited by the John Sayles film. A must see, that’s for sure.
(from For the Birds)
Ravens, not a whole lot about them in books, mostly about their symbolic journey through mankind’s tedious history, and good old Edgar’s infatuation. Nothing much about the bird itself except that it is a bigger and smarter version of its cousin the crow. But the raven has inhabited my part of the forest for as long as I can remember. One pair has nested in the white pines year after year, populating the Valley. The male is large and strong; the female more slender with a missing feather in one wing so you can recognize her when she is in flight. Both are not afraid of us two legged neighbors.
This year I have been more attentive to the pair—they’ve nested in a towering white pine that stands alone by a red hand pump up the road. Larry has been feeding them all winter in my backyard. They’ve come to expect it even when I appeared—twice a day they screech outside my window—twice a day I comply with stale rolls or bread. They have two or three babies that hatched in March. When I arrived, they seem healthy and loud and demanding of their parents to feed them and won’t let up until the parents either bring some food or screech one high pitched warning to shut up, I guess, that there is danger nearby. Only then do they quiet.
The comings and goings of the parents, whom I call Notch and Beauty, are marked only by the babies screeching and the familiar whoosh of their wings as they displace the air. Something I have been noticing about the pair. When either one approaches the rolls I toss out, and they sure know when I do that because they appear from nowhere almost instantly, they land only one at a time. When one does, it hops sideways toward the food, rubbing its beak on the ground one way and then another, stopping, and then repeating the whole procedure. The female does it three or four times, then takes the food and leaves. The male goes through a much more dramatic ritual. All the other creatures do not go near him nor do they cross the “lines” he makes in the pine needles surrounding the food he plans to take. Quite a process. Then he takes as much of the bread or rolls that he can. He stacks the pieces, and either opens his beak wide to take the stack, or else stabs them onto his beak. Sometimes he has so much that he cannot take off and has to start the process all over again. Sometimes he makes it like a heavy pay loader. Amazing.
(from Basic Flight Training)
The ravens have had their young ones flying, or attempting to do so, since the day after Memorial Day. Two are doing well, but the third hasn’t even passed basic training yet. He began by bouncing off my camp roof after colliding with the metal smokestack and then sliding backward down the metal roof. Then he tried another camp and a couple of trees and didn’t fare much better. He up and quit. I guess he decided walking, or hopping, was safer and did so for hours, much to the parent ravens horror. He hopped over and looked at me through the screen door. He hopped clear around the outside of my camp. He hopped up the dirt road, then back again. By nightfall Beauty and Notch were beside themselves. They had gotten the two other young ravens safely tucked away in their nest, but Hoppy was still hopping. Finally they began mock attacking him until he took flight, well sort of took flight—he looked like a low flying kite that couldn’t quite catch the air to rise.
This has continued for days now. The other two young ones are doing quite well; but Hoppy, well he hops most of the time. First he goes to the big white pine behind my camp, sits about 30 feet up and shreeks. The parents try to urge him to fly further, and he doesn’t. He just sits there for about a half an hour. Then, when Beauty and Notch are clearly out of patience, Hoppy fly-flops to another tree and the procedure begins all over again. I think his problem is that he doesn’t like heights. To each his own.
(from entry Kayaking)
Moving against the current as the sea reclaims the water she has given during high tide, the sea breeze fights its surface causing cross-current waves even in the bay. There is nothing like the ocean. Keep the bow into the waves. Don’t let the wind push you broadside. Keep paddling: two repetitions forward, one wave back, as you edge your way to the next island. There is nothing like paddling a ten foot kayak
off the coast of Maine. So many places to see, so many creatures to behold.
Wood Island: turn of the l9th century lighthouse, wooden mile long walkway through an enchanted forest stunted by storms, filled with deer, baby ducks learning to swim and dive beneath our feet, and sea gulls quite perturbed as we pass. The gulls become raucous and several block our way, others screech shrilly. They have eggs and chicks: the eggs are light brown speckled with black; the chicks are fuzzy, tiny, and very inquisitive. We move cautiously at all times, and we begin to cover our heads because the daddy gulls are diving much too close for comfort. Larry, our fearless leader, is bringing up the rear of our entourage. I can see why. The gulls seem to sense he is the alpha male in our party and are dive bombing him, coming much too close to spearing him in the head. Larry is horrified when I stop to take photographs of the chicks. We touch nothing and move on to the lighthouse where we picnic rather uncomfortably.
Alfred Hitchcock would be proud of these gulls as they amass and eye us. This is not a good day to dally, so we retreat, Larry in the lead, back along the mile long wooden walkway. The gulls follow: some circle us from above; another dive bombs Larry’s head; others waddle in front, between and beside us. They have very beady eyes that do not convey the least bit of friendliness. We have dared to disturb their rookery, and we better get out while we still can. We touch nothing and move slowly, carefully on, mumbling softly, “We’re not going to hurt your babies. Don’t worry. We’re not going to hurt you or your babies.” We arrive to the shore, get into our kayaks and launch ourselves down the boat ramp. It is slick and the momentum we build careens us off into the tidal current. Off to the next island, the next adventure, the next creature awaiting us.
Bufflehead ducks—males look like skunks with wings. Cormorants—like black smoke as they dive, spear fish, resurface, and watch us paddle by. Seals—but they are gone in a flash. One of us comments there are 60 different kinds of gulls or some absurd number like that. I think we saw most of them. On one island they clearly dominate and we would be fools to question their wisdom and attempt to land. We give them a wide birth. Some are gray and white, others black and white, different sizes, different shadings, similar dispositions—stay clear. Stephen King lives in Maine.
Another island has a large metal cross on top, or is it a discarded masthead? Reminds me of the metal cross remains of the World Trade Center. On
another island is an obelisk type of structure that has been there since Civil War days. If I was not claustrophobic, I might have ventured a climb inside of it to the top. But I am, so I didn’t. We are nearing shore now. The tide has beaten us in—rather, it has gone out and we are faced with a huge sand bar in the middle of the bay between us and the where the river meets the sea and our vehicles await us. We climb out into ankle deep sand and plod through its frosty coldness fighting the suction that almost prevents any headway. Joanne falls in. A cold proposition for mid-June. The gulls race beside us, their thin legs stay on top of the sand as they grab up scurrying crabs, a feeding frenzy. I reach the deeper water and it loosens the kinks in my legs so I am able to move smoother, freer now on surer footing. That’s an MS thing. Cold helps the nerve connections function better. We climb into our kayaks and move across the channel, fighting the current where the river meets the bay. We go to eat at a seafood restaurant overlooking the ocean, then walk off our meal along a coastal, dead end road, walking and talking way past sunset. Four friends.
Two days later another friend and I head inland to Providence Lake in New Hampshire. It is ours alone today, no other craft in sight. The wind picks up as we make our way through it to the edge of the shore, then follow the lake shore to the far end, where we stop and picnic and talk. “Why do we always seem to have so much to talk about?” you say. We do, and it isn’t the kind of talk in lieu of silence, because we handle silence well too. It is real. I am a large woman but I am graceful in my kayak, except when I get in and out. That endeavor can never be construed as graceful in any shape or form or stretch of the imagination. I fall and it’s cold, spring fed, and so we eat quickly so I don’t freeze. The wind has picked up to 30 mph and increasing rapidly. We decide we need to complete our journey around the lake now. As we make our way along the far back end, we see a loon on a nest. She squinches down to protect her eggs. There were floods this spring and she must have lost her first nest. This is usually the time for chicks learning how to dive for fish. She is very intent and flattens herself across the nest. We move on so as not to disturb her any further. We saw her mate earlier, bobbing in the whitecaps.
It is clear we need to get back to where we put in, a few miles away. The wind has picked up to 40 mph and still seems to be increasing. We need to keep our bows straight, not let the cross winds and waves turn us or hit us broadside; just let the waves propel us back. We are really moving. Imagine if we had sails. We’d probably be airborne. When we venture a peek behind us, we see the waves—they are big and they are really close together. “Does the distance, or lack of it, indicate the speed of the wind or the height of the waves?” you ask as we both struggle to keep righted and not collide into each other. Is she serious, I think? Ever heard of The Perfect Storm? We make it back, we land, but not on our own volition; the waves literally throw us onto the shore. I land sideways and the waves start filling my kayak. I’m laughing so hard, I can’t get out on my own. Cheryl helps me. It has been one of those days again. Good kayaking, a good friend. How lucky can one be?
These are the moments I carefully store up for “winter,” for those times when I am getting yet another chemo-treatment. Instead of watching the plastic bags drip into my IV, I close my eyes and bring all my senses together to relive my kayaking adventures with friends. They are that vivid to me. The nurses think I am smiling because I am courageous—boy have I ever fooled them. I’m maneuvering closely to a loon sitting on her nest, or maybe I am feeling the wind carry me over one wave, and then the next. I am sitting deep in the water, safe in my green 10 foot Loon kayak. I am rocking in my chair on the screened in porch of my camp in the White Mountains watching Hoppy watch me.
