The Deception of The Sea

When one visits an ocean beach for the first time, it is likely during a vacation or holiday of some sort. A festive attitude is usually the prevalent mood. Statistically, most of those first-time visitors go home with nothing worse than a sunburn and lots of sand in their car. But not everyone escapes with such an innocuous experience.

Every ocean beach has a great body of water that is attached to one of its edges. In that edge zone, there is a tug-of-war that takes place. Land and sea are locked in a ceaseless struggle. It is known as the surf. It is hypnotic. It is fascinating. It is beautiful. It is the best diversion in the universe.

While the human mind is occupied with the distraction of the surf, hidden mysteries are playing out just beyond sight. A subtle tension is ever present, but not evident. It is just below the surface and just beyond the horizon at the same time.

It is the call of the sea. But it does not call all people. Or perhaps it does and some resist it.

To those of us who hear it, the sea whispers into our imagination. It is like a drug we cannot shake off.

The ocean is filled with mystery. There are thousands of shipwrecks on the ocean floor, each with a story. There are so many untold stories. My imagination tries to fill in the blanks when I see evidence of a sunken vessel on my depth sounder. I also visualize the fish schooling there.

Speaking of fish, there are creatures, large and small, awaiting discovery in the ocean. They may actually be avoiding discovery. Some that are well known can be exhilarating when viewed. Watching orcas (killer whales) hunt is fascinating and chilling at the same time. I have been fishing in a small boat in foggy conditions, and heard a pod of orcas “blowing” nearby. That can make the hair on a billiard ball stand up. That was a “Call me Ishmael” moment for me. Yet I can't break the allure that the sea has on me.

Then there is the horizon to consider. That elusive, promising horizon is always out there, like a Siren, calling us beyond. It represents an endless scope of exploration. The imagination begins at that indefinitive line. So many breathtaking views have been witnessed after surrendering to the urge to surpass the horizon.

I think the most remarkable feature of the sea is its power. The ocean has tremendous power. It is not infinite power, mind you. That belongs to God alone. However, the unthinkable amount of power displayed by the sea should make us humble. Yet so many miss that point. While pathetic mortals are frolicking on the beach, flexing whatever they think is impressive to their fellow mortals, the sea is relentlessly grinding stone and shell into sand. It has been doing so since the beginning. It will do so until the end. What a lame species we have proven to be. The joke is on us and the sea laughs and keeps on grinding.

And some people think the sea does not laugh. Even the seagulls get that one.

In Search of Discomfort

There is a disturbing societal trend taking place in our country. It may be infecting the whole world, for all I know.

The trend is toward adventuring. Now, I am all for adventures. I have lived my life as an adventure. I have many scars and near-death stories to share as a result. What I am bothered by is the heroification of “safe adventuring.”

If you want to go camping in a motor home, that is perfectly fine with me. I'm sure I would enjoy it too. But please don't confuse that with a genuine adventure. Adventure, by my definition, requires a bold step into the unknown, the uncertain, the potentially unsafe, and certainly the uncomfortable. Carefully calculated, risk-mitigated activities are not adventures.

I suspect this trend stems from two roots. The first is the notion that we are entitled to a life of comfort and satisfaction. We are not. That is neither a Constitutional guarantee, nor is it in the Bible. Second is the proliferation of “reality” TV show. I only have secondhand experience with the reality show stuff, as we do not have a TV. But from what I have heard, “people who live just like we did in Alaska,” do not live anything like we did in Alaska.

Maybe I should have posted a spoiler alert there. Sorry. Those shows are as staged as a Broadway musical. When I got hurt, or stuck, or lost, or threatened by a wild beast, there was no one else around to record the event. There was no one to call out to for help. There was no safety network.

It may have been foolhardy, but that was reality. Try walking thirteen hours out of the mountains after getting good and lost, soaked, and all but unconscious with hypothermia. First time, do it without anyone in the world knowing where you are. Next time, try it with a camera crew, aerial shots and all. One of these things is not like the other.

Okay, that's out of my system. I feel better.

Surprisingly, the primary objective of an adventure is not discomfort. The primary objective is learning or discovering something. No one ever learned the limits of their strength, character, or skill by watching someone else do something amazing. They learned it when they surpassed their own comfort zone. That would include discomfort.

No one ever discovered a new continent, or stepped on the moon, or climbed to the top of a rugged mountain, while walking on a sidewalk. They discovered those places long after the safe horizon had disappeared. I'm pretty sure that included discomfort too.

I could go on here, but I'm not actually promoting anything. I am only making a distinction between activities and adventures.

On second thought, maybe I am promoting something. Do you want to climb a mountain? Do you want to go to Kenya and volunteer at an orphanage? Do you want to build your own house? Do you want to study something? What are you afraid of?

Have an adventure! Live as if you are alive! Maybe don't do some of the really stupid risky stuff I have done, but stretch yourself. It will hurt. Do it anyway!

A Priceless Piece of Worn Out Rope

To the untrained eye, it looks like a piece of used-up rope. That is a shame. Every knot, every cut, and each abrasion has its own story.

This old rope may look like it has been through the mill. In fact, it has. But it comes with more than a twenty-five year history of adventure, service, and travel. It started its life in Alaska as a 200 fathom long floatline on a commercial salmon fishing net. The floats were attached to the line and the net was woven on around the floats. After the net was discarded, I salvaged the line. I can still remember the smell. It was a damp, slightly fishy, and a little bit earthy smell. It was also a hot day at nearly 70°. It would have laid in that pile and rotted over the years if I had not intervened.

As a matter of definition, a rope is a rope as long as it is on the spool. After it is cut for a purpose, it is a line. Don't ask me, I don't make up the rules. I can barely speak the language.

With a workload rating of 9500 pounds, I used that repurposed line for just about everything while we lived in Alaska. I used it as a safety line when I shoveled snow off of our roof. I used it to drag deadfall logs out of the woods for firewood. I tied down anything that needed to stay down for real. I pulled cars out of the ditch. I hung game meat in the woodshed as we processed it for winter. I probably made a swing for my kids with some of it.

When we moved back to the States in the early 90's, I used it to lash our awkward load of worldly possessions into the boat and truck. When we built a cabin in the woods in Minnesota, it was used to secure lumber to the trailer for transport, and to suspend heavy wall frames for construction.

I tied off wind-damaged trees with that line to tension and fell the tree away from the house. Amazingly, that worked each time. That success is not a universal guarantee, and I know of people who lost their lives doing that. (Don't try it, hire someone with a bigger piece of equipment.)

Through the years the line would get broken, abraded, or necessarily be cut. As an aside, I have a personal aversion to cutting line. I am sure that is a form of neurosis, but you can never uncut a line, so I do everything I can before I resort to the knife.

Eventually there were only a few pieces of it left. I saved them for use as the bowline on my boat. It is a traditional way of securing the boat to anything. I like it. But the piece in this picture was special: it was the very last piece. I was a young man when I acquired it.

As I unceremoniously tossed that piece of line into the trash can, I ended its long and interesting career. Oddly enough, all those memories were summoned into my recollection by cutting that damaged line and replacing it.

I'm looking around at the old damaged people I know. Every one of them has some story. No doubt some of them laid around in a coil and decayed. But some have been to interesting places and done amazing things.

Why Adventurers Have No Friends

It probably comes as no surprise that I love adventuring. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that on my life priority list, creature comfort ranks substantially below Adventure.

For the record, I am not a monastic adventurer. I am certainly not morally opposed to creature comforts. I am writing on a computer, sitting in an air conditioned house. My chair is, well, other than being on the verge of breaking, it is … uncomfortable. (I should name it Adventure.) So maybe the chair doesn't qualify as a creature comfort, but I am enjoying a cup of coffee. That said, I am always thinking about something adventurous. Naturally, in my writing, adventures seem to find their way in. Hence, when I set out to write a children's book, the series, The Adventures of Boathouse Mouse is what came about.

What precipitated this line of thought this morning? It so happens that I have Book 3 in the series written in my head. I have also begun to write it on electronic paper. But, since Book 1 is nearing the finish line with the illustrations, and Book 2 has yet to be revealed, I feel like I am going to drown poor Shawna.

Dear Shawna, I am so sorry that I am a mad man who is up hours before the rest of the world on a holiday weekend, writing in peace, and making more work for you. Good thing we are not being driven by deadlines. Although, I suspect that day will come and some production-mined publisher will get us to agree to a deadline and we will be all hours finishing a work. But, hopefully by then we'll be getting paid well. Who knows? Meanwhile we press on making our respective art work the best we can.

P.S. I think you're doing an awesome job. I cannot wait to read Book 1 in The Adventures of Boathouse Mouse to my granddaughter!

So, for all of you who are adventurers at heart, never satisfied to sit and watch TV, and those of you who prefer your adventurers served vicariously, I wish you all a safe adventure this Independence Day weekend.

Someday I will do a blog on the paradox of safe adventures. But for now we'll leave that dog sleeping.

A Sneak Look at Boathouse Mouse

All the writing gurus say steer clear of collaborative work as it can cause bad feelings, and worse, take away some of your profit margin. To me, that seems like a shallow way to live life. Meanwhile, I have this series of children's books growing in my head and in my computer.

Every day that I work on the series, I become more enamored with The Adventures of Boathouse Mouse. I knew early on that Boathouse Mouse needed an artist to love him into existence with pictures the way I do with words.

When I asked Shawna if she would be willing to do the illustrations for the series, I'm not sure she had any idea what was coming. I didn't either. But she was a trooper and jumped in. I've never regretted that decision. Shawna has drawn my words into life. I love what she is doing, and I am out-of-my-mind excited about releasing this book!

Here is a shameless teaser of one of Shawna's color test pieces.