Stepping South of Carmel

Hey Dad --

By the Breakwater

Monterey, CA
2/17/19

Asilomar: Tidepooling

Another Beauty

Paddling with JP and Bird

Note to a Friend

I have a hankering for a paddle at Mendocino, just for the sheer
practice and the place, but south and southwest swells make the north
route and even the south route both rough.  

The long drive, yes, but I
miss the caves and the specific landscape . . . .   Just mental
free-falling there.

Monterey has similar problems with a south swell, I think,
particularly if I am out of shape, as I am.  Hmmmmm.

So, I am thinking of good paddle-practice or paddle-experience.

What's your list of objectives or desires for a paddle outing this
coming weekend?

I would like to get wet and to sweat.

--MD

Steinbeck's Opening Invocation: Cannery Row

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.  Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses.  Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody.  Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,” and he would have meant the same thing.
. . . .
How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise – the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream – be set down alive?  When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under touch.  You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water.  And perhaps that might be the way to write this book – to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.

--John Steinbeck
from his novel Cannery Row 
(first and last paragraphs of Ch. 1)

Window Tripping

One Beginning.

Yearning (Oh, I Miss The Salt and Kelp)

I need to go diving.

(And, to be realistic, this diver would have a camera in his hands, not the speargun, and he'd ditch the tank for free diving.  Well, a tank dive would be fun too.  Oh, and the knife would be strapped to a leg.)

Maybe next weekend--or the one after that.

Batter Up! My Dad As A Young Man

R.I.P.  Dad.  The anniversary has rolled around once again.

My father was always a ball-player.  And, he has "Duckworth" written all over his face.

"An Empty Boat . . ."

An empty boat
will volunteer for anything.

--Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser,
from their collection Braided Creek.

Of course, one can appreciate the literal quality, the image of an actual boat just waiting, that call to adventure, or one can move metaphorically, the sense of the self as an empty vessel just available, that potential call to misadventure.  Or both.

(I love that small book: Braided Creek.)

No Wake Zone, Seriously

I'm Watching Him Watching You

Now, he's watching me.

Gazebo Rocks

Green Dreams: Monterey Bay Beckoning

Annotations: Broad, Carey, Carr

Broad, William J. The Universe Below: Discovering the Secrets of the Deep Sea. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Broad is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning science writer, who had two books on Stars Wars Weapons Systems under his belt before he shifted from sky-high to ocean-deep. The deep sea is one of the last territories on Earth to be explored, and Broad brings us up to date (into the 90s, anyway) through interviews, explanations, and some adventuring of his own. My favorite chapter, which I could excerpt for English 1A or for an aquatic-literary elective, is "Canyon," an in-depth look at the vast submarine canyon in our nearby Monterey Bay. The Packard family and MBARI, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, are the stars for this epic descent.

Carey, Robin. Baja Journey: Reveries of a Sea-Kayaker. College Station, TX: Texas A & M UP, 1989.

Carey is an English professor from the Pacific Northwest, on vacation in the waters of Baja Mexico, full of thoughts of Shakespeare, the local scenes, and human frailty: philosophical, but with groundedness, despite being all about the water.

After reading this book, I rented a kayak and explored Monterey Bay for a few hours. Yes, I spent a little thought on Shakespeare and I considered how much colder it was off Monterey than off Cabo San Lucas, but mostly I thought how getting closer to the surface of nature really can get you closer to yourself, in the best ways possible.

Carr, Archie. So Excellent a Fishe: A Natural History of Sea-Turtles. New York: Anchor, 1972.

Carr's book is the Bible for sea turtle science, at least for many people. My wife is now reading this book in preparation for her own trip to Costa Rica and to the specific turtle station in Tortuguero. Carr sets the bar high with this in-depth study. He also walks the reader through the developing body of knowledge as he and other researchers work to answer the questions that beset them. How do turtles know how to navigate? Must they return to the same beaches they were hatched on? Where do the turtles go while developing from hatchlings to young adults, since no one seems to know: And further questions. Carr reports what he learns, and he includes us in the learning process, which makes the book and enjoyable and worthy model for thinking and discovering the things of the world.

P.S. Since Carr's book was published in 1972, obviously there are more up-to-date treatments, but So Excellent a Fishe is foundational. If all you want is information, then pick a more recent book. Indeed you should--I should--read current material too. Carr's book takes you on the journey, and that's a compelling consideration, I hope. (As a further note, the more recent reprints reverse the subtitle and title, making the book easier to discover when looking for sea turtle material: A Natural History of Sea-Turtles.)

Postcard: Saltwater Reflection

I was very fortunate with the disposable camera this day in Monterey Bay. Fortunate with the light and the angle too.














I was free diving just northwest of Lover's Point, out from the parking lot at Otter Cove. I should check my notes for that day. I tend to write up my dives while enjoying the basic bacon & eggs at the Lighthouse Cafe in Pacific Grove, but I don't have a standard dive journal to hold all such notes. I use whatever is at hand: teaching notebook, napkin, postcard, blank pages or spaces in the book I'm reading. (You'd think I'd be more systematic, but then you wouldn't know me very well, would you?) I like the loose approach. I like writing up my notes wherever and however, and the writing matters more than the cataloging or rereading.

Except in a case like this one.

Where are my notes from . . . 2006?

What book was I reading that trip? Whom would I have written a postcard to that day? Was I carrying one of the usual Moleskines? I'm pretty sure I shot a much poorer picture of a bat ray that day also, so where's the rest of the roll?

By the way, all of the water-photos I've posted so far have been taken with your basic disposable "waterproof" 35 mm cameras. I have been lucky so far, though I plan to upgrade my equipment soon. With better equipment, I just may get luckier more often, more predictably, in the best sense.

And, what's Jack Johnson's line about moving like a jellyfish?

Dive Partners