GMB: "I Gave It Back To The Sea, To Dance In"

BEACHCOMBER

Monday I found a boot –
Rust and salt leather.
I gave it back to the sea, to dance in.

Tuesday a spar of timber worth thirty bob.
Next winter
It will be a chair, a coffin, a bed.

Wednesday a half can of Swedish spirits.
I tilted my head.
The shore was cold with mermaids and angels.

Thursday I got nothing, seaweed,
A whale bone,
Wet feet and a loud cough.

Friday I held a seaman’s skull,
Sand spilling from it
The way time is told on kirkyard stones.

Saturday a barrel of sodden oranges.
A Spanish ship
Was wrecked last month at The Kame.

Sunday, for fear of the elders,
I sit on my bum.
What’s heaven? A sea chest with a thousand gold coins. 

--George Mackay Brown


from The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown

Coomer: "Three Things Worth Doing"

"There are three things worth doing: making something new, caring for something old, and finding the lost. The fourth thing is your hand deep in dog fur, talking about the first three."

--Joe Coomer, Sailing in a Spoonful of Water

David Wagoner: "Lost"

LOST

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.


--David Wagoner,
from Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Thank you, ST, for sharing this poem with me.

M D U

At the end of the day's paddle to Emerald Bay and back, from my kayak I spotted two lost SUP paddles on the lake bottom, paused and considered, then continued up the shore 30 yards or so to beach my kayak near the path to my truck.  I described the paddles to the staff at the Baldwin Beach Kayak/SUP Rentals and their probable location.  I figured they could use the paddles; I like to share stories and finds, especially as I was ready to load up and leave.

On second thought--for how could I resist?--I grabbed fins and mask, and swam back to search for and, ideally, recover the two paddles.  Despite my efforts, I couldn't spot them again, but one of the staff took advantage of my info to recover one paddle from the bottom.  Score.  She used a stand-up-paddleboard, which gave her better perspective--that standing vantage--to scan for the "treasure".

Still counts, I say.

I love finding stuff.  I like when other people find stuff too.

For example, my best friend's wedding band from the bottom of a lake or another friend's truck keys from the Klamath River.  But those are stories for another day.

Lake Tahoe temps: 68 degrees in the upper layers.  That's pretty cosy after swimming in 54 degree Pacific Ocean water.  Diving down just a dozen feet meant finding the distinctly cooler waters that Lake Tahoe is famous for, however.  

Along this stretch of Baldwin Beach, I spotted two SUP paddles on the bottom--or I'm pretty sure there were two paddles.  I don't think I spotted the same paddle twice, but the kayak-rental staffer only found one.

Here, you can see how she's scanning the bottom from that standing vantage for those paddles.

A Tolkien Talisman

My talisman: Not this figurine of a hobbit actually, but the song posted below. One of Tom Bombadil's songs in The Fellowship of the Ring; a finding song. At least that's how Tom uses it, calling for the hobbits' ponies lost on the barrow-downs. And that's how I often use it myself, and have done for the last thirty-five years. If I misplace something (or myself), I tend to sing these four lines, over and over again. Often, I'll end up discovering what I was hunting, or I'll find something else just as useful, just as worthwhile.

Walking, paddling, or driving, I use Tom's song to express myself, adjusting the way I sing or chant the lines according to spirit and mood: sheer exuberance, foursquare contentment, whirling confusion, grinding frustration, stinging bitterness, the headlock and hollow-chestedness of melancholia, or the cold bite of grief. Given the right delivery, these four lines sound as a hearty call-to-arms, a wily wizard's spell, a lovesick ballad or a doleful, doom-laden dirge. Of course, I'm usually off-key and not being quite true to the book's original usage, but I don't think old J.R.R. would mind too much.

Listen, and then sing for yourself, whatever your mood:

Hey! Now! Come hoy now! Whither do you wander?

Up, down, near or far, here, there, or yonder?

Sharp-ears, Wise-nose, Swish-tail and Bumpkin,

White-socks my little lad, and old Fatty Lumpkin.

P.S. I first memorized these lines because my friend Ron Johnson already had them to hand in his head. That wouldn't do, you know? So, I started my own singing, and glad I am.

Postcard: The Salt Embrace

Or, In The Locker.

When I was a boy, I wanted to find the Elephants' Graveyard, the ruins of Atlantis, and Davy Jones' (actual) Locker.