Feeling Like The Captain:
I've felt like Captain Jack Sparrow for days now, having spent enough hours on the water last Thursday and Friday -- those bright, surgy days -- to absorb those rhythms and motions! I love that feeling.
By feeling like Captain Jack, I mean feeling wobbly and tilty and one with the sea. He had the
Black Pearl, and I have
Sofia
Log Jam: While kayaking last Thursday, I was startled by a shape in the water, by a long brown shape, that I took to be a mature sea lion that I was suddenly much too close to. Not a harbor seal, for the shape was too too long and broad, but a sea lion, and at close quarters, a full-grown sea lion could do plenty of defensive damage. That brown shape was just a log, however, a carved-off tree-portion about six or seven feet long drifting in the cove.
Now, having been surprised by that log, that shape, I back-paddled furiously and avoided any collision. Which would have been the right action, particularly if it had been a marine mammal. Still, I am struck by how much my startled response came before any rational sense of "Hey, that might be a sea lion, so avoid hitting the creature"; and, from reading and teaching Laurence Gonzales' Deep Survival, I am well aware of the dynamics of amygdala trumping hippocampus, of emotional reaction before rational decision, but still I would like to have not been so afraid of a shape. Haven't I trained for these situations? Haven't I paddled and visualized enough to respond more thoughtfully? Or, at least less fearfully? Was this a failure of grace? Or should I appreciate how much my core self, the body/emotional self, worked to take me out of (perceived) danger?
