Captain's Log

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?

Notebook: Whale-Watching / Kayaking

1.  I will have to set aside the camera a bit more deliberately to engage my whole sight and other senses.    Next time around.  The camera itself, turning it on, fussing with zooming and focusing, really narrows the experience.  I love having the shots to document and to spark memories, but I want to look and see more fully in the moment.

2.  The experience really was rooted in wet neoprene, in the seat of the wetsuit, in the motion of the swell under the kayak, in the lifting and the dropping and the shifting and the pulling and the pushing.  On the afternoon of the 30th, the tug was back into the harbor, but the swell was rising and the wind had created chop, so there was a constant motion -- up down thisway thatway-- that the morning had lacked, had been so flat and calm.  I love the water movement, and the sit-on-top is so well-crafted to ride such movements.  Even now, two days later, if I just sit and unfocus, I am moving in my mind with residual body sense-memories.  A lovely sensation to me.

3.  Then, besides the emphatic floating quality, the sounds!  So many birds flying, shrieking, calling, ker-plunking into the water after the anchovies.  Pelicans and terns and murres and cormorants and classic gulls.  Terns and pelicans out with us, mostly.  Then, the barking of sea lions in the distance, the splashing of seals nearby, the crunching-lunching of otters.  The chatter of humans: excited, agitated, inane.  "HOLY SHIT" were the first words out of one fellow's mouth, as he rounded the small point to leave the harbor only to be faced with a lunging whale.  (That fellow was off his game, more nervous than his date, and he shadowed JP and me off and on, nervously.  Still, such caution in such a situation is no bad thing, and his date may have been more water-savvy -- or simply oblivious -- than he was.)  The whales' spouting, blowing, and splashing.  Occasionally, the power station would let out great blasts of steam that would mimic the whale spouts--and would confuse me, for a moment, as I looked for that other whale.  The water made the most noise and the most noises, lapping and slapping and splashing and crashing along and onto the jetty, the kayak, the whales, itself.

Riddles at Random

. . . in the rain.

The Motion Of The Ocean

Can you feel it?

Swell Shots

Or, All About The Undulations.

I wanted to catch the rolling, flexing water, and while the shot above may seem a bit ominous to some of you, being in the kelp is what relaxes me here. The thick kelp beds off Van Damme State Beach in Mendocino Co. here mellow out the incoming swell so that we get this rolling effect, not a breaking effect, even though the water's rather shallow beneath my kayak.  Ideally, I'd have been in the water for an even better angle than this one from the low deck of my kayak, but I wasn't ready for that cold immersion just yet.  And, since this is only a light swell, the rolling effects are rather subtle, but they hold my attention nevertheless; I like watching--and feeling, especially--all such movements, dramatic or not.  (At the end of the day, I could still feel and relish the rise and fall of the water in my body.)

Perhaps this series will work for you too.

Time to start paddling again.

Reprise: Dona Quixote

Garage art: the unfinished gymnast.

I've been checking out old projects and unfinished artwork a lot lately. I'd like to be creating more, but I'm exhausted. I'd like to be swimming, diving, and kayaking, but I'm exhausted. It's Spring Break, but I haven't been able to catch up on my sleep in any meaningful way, and I'm so low energy, I can barely get anything done. Flat-out beat, but I need to regain some energy, recoup some energy, something, somehow.

Saddened, reflective, exhausted. I look at the Gymnast here, and I know she feels much the same way. But she's holding on, holding up, and with a bit of style.

I must aim to do the same.

Where It's Fun