Hello, hello, hello! Five months ago we were the carefree crusty cadre of creatures you see here.But enough of that (for now). On to Seattle!
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON – four months and still unpacking boxes…
I wanted to update my blog before too much time had gone by, but it’s too late for that – too much time has gone by – so I’m updating my blog now after too much time has gone by. Got that?
For those wanting to head straight to pictures, the main groupings are on the following posts: Utah (10/14/2009, Back from beyond part III), Nepal, Thailand, Cambodia (4/15/2010), sailing (8/1/2010).
The main writings are: Utah (10/9/2009, 10/14/2009), Kathmandu (10/20/2009), Everest trekking (11/4/2009, 12/2/2009, 12/10/2009), Thailand and Elephant sanctuary (1/1/2010), Cambodia (1/11/2010), Thailand island (1/23/2010), sailing (8/1/2010 and today), miscellaneous mucking about (today).
And now, for the much anticipated update.
What Is Home?
“How do you pick up the threads of an old life?
How do you go on
When in your heart you begin to understand
There is no going back…”
– Frodo
One of the final scenes in The Lord of the Rings keeps circling around in my head – the one in which Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry are back in the Shire, sharing a drink in the pub, and they raise their glasses and look at each other in silence, for how can you speak when so much has happened (you’ve just saved the world after all), the world is different, you are different, but right around you life goes on the same as ever, as if nothing had ever happened, as if you’d never even been gone. You’ve been to hell and back, and you’ll never be the same again.
So.
In the five plus years we’ve been gone from Seattle, we haven’t managed to save the world, but we’ve seen prayers flying on the wind in the highest mountains in the world, we’ve felt the beauty and power of the most beautiful places on earth – the North Cascades, the red rock canyons in Utah, Southeast Asian jungles, warm oceans at night, Himalayan sacred lakes, the Grand Canyon, a valley in the midst of a forest fire, just to name a few – we’ve experienced the exceptional, almost non-stop, both exceptionally good and exceptionally bad (even She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named gave me, in a slightly round-a-bout way, some of the most spectacular times of my life).
Now, back in Seattle. Good to be home? people ask, in various forms of the question or comment, but always with that word – home.
This, this little drafty house on an average block in an average neighborhood of a big city, this space where we’ve tacked up Tibetan prayer flags and lavishly embroidered hangings from Kathmandu, had framed an intricate and delicate hand painted mandala (the framing, which took some American maybe an hour, costing three times that of the painting, which took a Nepalese monk fourteen days), we frame it and stick it on the wall to remind us of other worlds, other universes so foreign that they seem like a dream. This, this space we’ve been putting so much work into (repainting, new floors, new woodstove). Home?
What is home?
Home is a high mountain meadow, with marmots whistling and the wind blowing shreds of cloud across the sun.
Home is a silver river at dusk, running through a forest of deep green shadows, great horned owls who-who-hooting.
Home is the ocean full of bioluminescence.
Home is sitting with friends, not needing to say anything.
Home is knowing what phase the moon is in without looking at the calendar.
Home is the sound of a snowflake falling.
Home is outside, in the elements, being blasted by the sun, or frozen by icy wind, nature battering about your body till you are no longer confined to your skin, but fly with peregrines and run with coyotes.
Home is silence, and wide-open spaces.
Home is the wind on your face, and the snow in your hair.
Home is the night sky, as meteors and specks of interstellar dust fall through the atmosphere, their glittering paths alight momentarily, winking out almost before they’ve begun, leaving nothing but a sparkling memory, a dream, a vision. It's the infinity of space, black and beckoning, pierced with shining, glimmering, shimmering stars.
Home is holding adventure close.
Home is where you love, and are loved.
Major accomplishments since being back in Seattle:
Listened to the whole 7th Harry Potter book-on-tape (17 CDs worth) while painting all the trim in our house.
Camped out in our kitchen for only three months. Our friends were polite, but I know they secretly wondered when the heck we were going to act like normal Americans and get some furniture. Besides, entertaining in the breakfast nook is, at best, entertaining.
Learned to make true Thai sticky rice – after many attempts and five pounds of rice ruined (is this soup or Crunchy Nuggets?), we finally got a traditional sticky rice basket and pot, and what do you know? STICKY RICE! (FYI – Sticky rice is not just rice that is sticky because you left it in the pot too long. It’s a special type of rice that turns from opaque to translucent when you cook it – the opposite of regular rice – and you have to eat it with your fingers, because it’s stuck together in this big blob – when we first had this delectable treat in northern Thailand, we looked at the mass of rice in the plastic bag that the woman handed us and immediately asked for a fork, three to be precise. She just smiled and looked at us with what I took to be a mixture of pity and motherly endurance. We finally found, a few stalls down, a couple of plastic spoons, which immediately broke as we tried to eat like the Westerners we were. Sticky rice works perfectly as a finger food – it sticks to itself but not your fingers – though I never tired in my attempts to eat it with chopsticks – again those patronizing looks, but chopsticks are so exotic, and hey, we’re in an exotic place, and it’s practically China, and isn’t everyone around here supposed to be eating with chopsticks? The only thing in Thailand that truly disappointed me was the fact that you get chopsticks with a meal ONLY if you’ve ordered noodles. They eat everything else with a spoon and fork – like us, except not like us, the spoon acts like a fork, and the fork acts like a knife, pushing your food into the spoon – and fingers of course. Okay, end of aside, and aside’s aside.) So, STICKY RICE at home. Sprinkle on a little of our special SE Asian mixture of salt/sugar/chili powder/cayenne and add a pomelo on the side (grapefruit will have to do here), dipped also in the special spice, and some lime is never amiss, and we’re transported to Chiang Mai. Now we just need to figure out how to get the tropical breezes to go with it.
Installed a woodstove – What? In the city? you say. Hey, did you EVER see smoke coming out of Chalet 8’s chimney? I know you did not. We are experts at the smokeless fire. Also, in the 5 ½ years away from Seattle, I’ve become averse to adjectives like chilly, drafty, drizzly, dark – and that’s just indoors.
Moved our stuff. And more stuff. And more stuff. WHAT IS THIS STUFF? And we still have to camp out in the kitchen?
Got rid of stuff.
Picked up some comfy furniture (I know, more stuff) at Goodwill so we were able to move out of the kitchen.
Mid-September, Raina and I moved back into our empty house. (Marc had been here for weeks already, demolishing and restoring, cleaning and painting while Raina and I housesat in comfort ten miles away.) I dropped Raina at school, Marc at work, and walked alone into our house, sat on the floor in the basement next to boxes and suitcases, burst into tears and sobbed. Am I so spoiled, that having everything I could possibly need elicits this response? I hadn’t cried this hard for years. I just couldn’t help it. My exceptional life was suddenly unexceptional. After ten minutes I got up, washed my face, took a walk, then slowly, and with great resistance, got busy with the unexceptional work on the unexceptional house.
Dug up 635 dandelions by hand (now that’s exceptional).
Had an interview with the Seattle School District in which I learned the meaning of the phrase, “afraid of lawsuits.” The group of about ten teachers, administrators, and parents was only allowed to ask me, VERBATIM, the seven or so questions we each had in front of us on a sheet of paper. They each took a turn at reading, VERBATIM, no feeling or inflection, wouldn’t want to give anything away here, a question aloud. I would then respond, getting no feedback or clarifying questions (NOT ALLOWED). I tried not to be offended that I, a high school teacher with a master’s degree for God’s sake, was being treated to a meeting in which we were all assumed to be somewhat mentally unbalanced and unable to have a decent discussion. So I babbled away in that manner you assume when you are trying to fill the void in a one-way conversation (isn’t that an oxymoron?). It was truly pathetic, in an amazing and eye-rolling sort of way. I obviously didn’t get the job. But the cultural experience was worth every minute. What a contrast to my interview some years back with a certain unnamed PUBLIC school district where I was asked point blank if my then pre-school aged daughter was going to attend Sunday School…
Cooked, shopped. Cooked, chopped, shopped. Cooked, chopped, mopped, shopped. Okay, so I didn’t mop. And what’s with this cooking thing anyway? It takes so much time.
Raina and Marc are back at school and work doing great things. Me, I’m trying to decide what to be when I grow up.
I am lost in the city.
So let’s go back to Asia for a moment!
Language fun – translations, misspellings and such:
Menus were an especially good place for a laugh, but the language thing never ceased to please…
From menus along our trekking route in Nepal:
Cold Slow Salad (Let’s see, that would be coleslaw, which I never really saw in Nepal, so probably just cabbage of some kind.)
Hot and Shower Soup (That would be hot and sour, though we certainly did need a shower.)
Bag Paper (Bag paper? What the heck is that? Oh, it’s listed with the local Chang. Bag Piper Whiskey. Don’t know who orders whiskey up here in the thin air. Though we did see a group of Bulgarians chugging down the Everest Beer – at $5.00 a can no less – at Chhkung [and no, I didn’t put an extra “h” in there] at 15,000 feet, waiting for the weather to clear for their climb up a mere blip of a mountain near Everest. The alcohol certainly improved their stories, if not their health.)
Dessert was always spelled desert (probably because of the dearth of it), and popcorn (yes, in some guest houses near Everest you can order this treat – ours came burned and on a plate, but oh so tasty at 16,000 feet), popcorn for some reason was usually listed under soups.
From a menu in Thailand:
Stir Fried Crap (What can I say? We didn’t order it.)
On the door of a toilet in the Himalayas:
Please don’t throw dustbin in toilet (They meant the contents of the dustbin, I mean garbage can, which happens to be TP which Westerners like us carry with them everywhere they go and is not meant to flush down the pipes, because there are no pipes, and no flush, not to mention no seat and no sink, so you also have to carry hand sanitizer everywhere you go – okay, so it’s just an outhouse, though sometimes in the house, with no seat, just a hole with space for your two feet on either side – that’s one foot on each side, you get the picture – sometimes it’s actually a ceramic toilet bowl in the floor, in which case you pour in a little water from a bucket to clean things up when you’re finished – if you’re really into it you use the water in the bucket instead of your toilet paper, thus having no TP to worry about what to do with – all I can say is I’d hate to have the job of emptying the garbage cans, I mean dustbins.)
And after a warm welcome on the sign at the entry to the Everest region (Sagarmatha National Park):
“While visiting this special area, visitors are encouraged to: 1. Refrain from taking life. 2. Refrain from anger. 3. Refrain from jealousy. 4. Refrain from offending others. 5. Refrain from taking excessive intoxicants. Enjoy your visit.” (I’ll do my best not to kill anyone.)
Favorite saying in Thailand and Cambodia:
“Same same but different” (The ultimate in multiple-use. Especially useful in those many situations where you don’t want to say what you mean. See January 1, 2010 blog post for explanation.)
The language thing just became something normal and everyday. You expected imperfection and mistakes and translation gaffs.
When we were back in the States and I was buying a pound of coffee at a large grocery store, I noticed in the French Roast section a number of the packages read French Toast (did you catch that? A T instead of an R and your eyes are playing tricks on you). And instead of thinking that there could possibly be a coffee type called French Toast (after all, what intelligent company would chose a name so close to another, very popular, very particular and totally unsimilar type?), so instead of thinking French Toast could possibly be anything but a typo, I smiled fondly and thought, oh how cute, they meant French Roast, I’m going to buy that one to remind me of good memories overseas.
Well, we didn’t drink quite so much coffee that week.
In fact, it took us quite some time to get through a pound of French Toast flavored coffee (I had ground it at the store, and as soon as I’d ripped open the package to pour it into the grinder, I knew something was amiss by the sickly sweet maple odor emanating from my fingertips, but by then I’d passed the point of no return.)
I still have the package. Good memories.
Fourth of July, 2010 – in which the beauty of the natural world is mistakenly replaced by rain and snow and crabby people:
Alpine Lakes Wilderness, Washington Cascades.
Ah, here we sit under some fir trees, thick dense fir trees that block maybe one tenth of the wind and rain that has been pelting us for four days now. Four days and we’ve managed to get nine miles from our car, which sits patiently awaiting our return at the trailhead, annoyed I am sure that we drove it through a slightly-deeper-than-I-would-have-liked river (you know, one of those crossings where the Forest Service thought it would save money by not building a bridge, but rather just paving a handy dip in the road), probably coughing up frogs and mud. Will it start when we get back? Will the DIP be a raging torrent? Will our car be swept away, with us in it? Or worse, get stuck in the middle and now we look like total incompetents? This is a little Geo we’re talking about here…
These are my thoughts as I cuddle a little closer to a subalpine fir, which responds by sending a shower of icy droplets down my back. But our tent is up. I’m warming my hands over our backpacking stove (oh wait, I think I’m supposed to be cooking the Ramen). We’ve found a tiny, bare-ground enclave in amongst all this snow. It’s July for God’s sake. Yes, I know, we should have been expecting this – we’ve spent many a June and July hiking in snow. I think all that time in the tropics messed up our snow-mometer. Time to recalibrate.
Routefinding, camping on snow, fog, drizzle, more snow – makes for slow going. But we did camp in “Ol’ Fourteener” (Littlewolf’s name – yes, the stuffed wolf is still with us, leading the way), a beautiful (though mist and drizzle shrouded) basin with fourteen waterfalls pouring into it. We finally found our way up here to Marmot Lake, July 4th, celebration of our country’s birth, though today all the marmots must be partying indoors, snug in their dens. Hey, did you know that the blond color on the backs of marmots is bleaching due to the urine soaked walls of those cozy little dens? I could do with a little marmot pile-up right about now – and a few blond highlights wouldn’t be bad either.
Would we be here if we weren’t homeless at the moment? If we had our nice warm house [see how I thought of it then, as a fond memory, as opposed to the cold, drafty reality?] in Seattle to go back to? Nope. But then, we’d miss being the first this year to make it here (it’s all about firsts, you know), this wet soggy snowy campsite, and this whole side of the Cascades all to ourselves! And on our four day slog in we did see pikas (SO CUTE), and heard marmots – hey, DID YOU KNOW that the marmot whistle is actually made with the vocal chords, so it’s like a scream, rather than a whistle? (I love marmot trivia and stories, don’t you? I think it may all stem from my mind numbing experience as an undergraduate punching computer cards – remember those? – for a marmot research project. The large marmot on the left raises his tail. Punch. The small blond – spent a lot of time in the den? – marmot eats some flowers. Punch. The large marmot flaps his tail. Punch. Mind numbing. But hey, these are MARMOTS! And you can’t get cuter than that. Except for pikas.) And the wildflowers were extravagant (and wet): lupine, marsh marigolds, spring beauties, paintbrush, bleeding hearts, glacier lilies, salmonberry, miner’s lettuce.
“Looks brighter, doesn’t it?” The saying of the week.
No flowers up here though, just snow, and mist, and drizzle, and chilly feet – but oh that Top Ramen smells mighty tasty! And we’ve discovered a fantastic drink – one spoonful of chocolate mix, one spoonful of powdered milk, one peppermint tea bag, add boiling water, and WOW, that surpasses any decadent Starbuck’s triple deluxe frappa zappa zing.
Well, time to jog about the campsite to warm up before din-din…
July 4th.
How to Cross a River 101.Ahoy ye mateys – in which all crabbiness abates and we are thrust into the sailing world of the 1800s (July, 2010):
A typical day on the Hawaiian Chieftain.
8:00 a.m. Breakfast
I get up at 7:59 ½ a.m., roll out of my bunk in the main hold, slap on the sandals, clothes are already on as I’ve slept in them for the past ten days, head to the galley for hot coffee, fruit, toast, and an array of highly caloric delectables that you cannot resist. Too few calories on this boat and you might have mutiny, not to mention hey what a crab and ho what a crab, hey ho crabby crabby ho ho crab – ask me and I’ll sing it for you sometime.
8:05 Breakfast muster in the aft cabin.
We take our coffee and calories to the back of the boat for the morning meeting. One of the crew is leaving today – on to a better, bigger, more expensive (and better paying) boat – so we sing the goodbye song – here’s to Noah, here’s to Noah, here’s to Noah he’s a horse’s ass. He’s the meanest (meanest!), sucks the horse’s….let’s just stop there shall we?
Next – Chores. (When to brush teeth? Pee? Comb hair?)
Chores consist of sanitizing, shining, and spit polishing every inch of the boat, from the fo’c’s’le (sailors like apostrophes) to the heads to the main cabin, to the brass. Every day. Every single day.
10:00 – 1:00 Dock Tours and Maintenance.
We are assigned stations and take turns hanging out on the dock, the quarterdeck, or the foredeck, welcoming visitors and answering questions. We are dressed in our cool 18th century sailor outfits. You can imagine how good we look when the nickname for the knickers is “pumpkin butt pants.” But we feel like Captain Jack Sparrow, just need a few danglies in our hair.
When not on tour duty, we are doing maintenance – such as sanding and varnishing (maybe a 2 on the fun scale) or tarring the standing rigging (definitely a 10, even though it blows the top off the messy-ness scale).You get to climb up into the rigging with a rag and a bottle of goopy tar, and wipe and massage it into every nook and cranny of the standing rigging (for weather protection and strength). Needless to say it gets into every nook and cranny of your clothes and body. Well, we need strength and protection from the weather too.
Talking about strength, these 20-somethings that crew this boat are in a universe of their own. They can do pushups galore – me, I can do, maybe, on a really good day, one. Barely. I can get out a few more if I cheat and do girl’s pushups. And these guys climb ropes and rigging like monkeys, like you see in the movies and think it’s all a trick of the lens (in fact our first mate was in Master and Commander), they can haul on lines that I can barely move even when I hang my entire weight upon them, they can fix a snagged line or a jammed pulley seventy-five feet above the deck as we roll and lurch through wind and waves, they know the names and functions of four miles of line (rope) and forty thousand slang terms – the ratlines, the gantlines, the buntlines, the leeches, the sheets, the running rigging – say that one ten times fast. (And you don’t say ratLINE, you say ratLIN’, gantlin’, buntlin’.) They climb over the futtocks with ease (I know that sounds a wee bit R-rated, but actually, the futtocks is kind of an overhang you have to climb up and over when ascending the masts to work aloft.) And after all this macho behavior (including drinking and wenching and tattoos) they are always ready for a game of Contact, a word game that seems so NON-tough, so utterly NORMAL that the normal seems ludicrous. I bet Captain Jack played Contact. Really, it’s just like the movies.
2:00 – 5:00 Battle Sail with the Lady Washington.
“All hands. Cast gaskets for the course, mains’l, upper, lower, inner, outer, mizzen, mizzen tops’l!” That’s eight sails we’re to get ready. One day, the order was, “If it has a gasket, cast it,” and we put up almost every sail we have (thirteen out of fifteen).
Six of us climb into the rigging to unfurl the sails. We’re underway, out of the marina now, motoring into the bay, with a boatload of people ready to battle the Lady Washington. Me, I’ll go up last. I figure then I’ll be working lower down and closer to the mast. My plan goes awry when I’m the first to the shrouds (that you climb up) and have no good reason for hanging about waiting on deck. Up I go, over the futtocks, onto the upper shrouds, all the way up to the Upper Topsail. Whoa. But, we’re so busy working out on the yards (the “square” part of a square rigger), I don’t have time to notice the swaying of the boat, or the height above the water, or the fact that I’ve just helped unfurl the sails on a SQUARE RIGGED SHIP (boat actually) and dressed the part to boot! Is this reality? Back on deck, (“On deck, aye!”), my heart races with adrenaline, and I’m ready for the next task. I’m hearing commands rattled off and repeated, “Hands to braces!” “Let go and haul!” “Turns on upper, turns on lower, turns on all!” “Sheet home mizzen!” “Tack upper tops’l!” “Prepare to come about!” “Let luff heads’ls!” “Pass heads’ls!” “Sheet home heads’ls!” “Prepare to wear ship!” “Board sheet heads’ls!” (As I’ve said before, everything on board is said with an exclamation point!) We’re running about, shouting back orders, raising and lowering, hauling those yards (naturally with a halyard!), tightening and turning, shouting responses.
I glance up and see the Lady Washington off our starboard bow. We’re trying to maneuver so that our guns (cannons) are pointed at her, but hers are not pointed at us. Our captain is sneaky and fakes out the Lady. We’re finally in position. It’s now or never. “Prepare for gunfire!” Everyone on board plugs their ears. There’s an explosion, and a blast of smoke. The two boats pass, seeming within arms reach of each other. More maneuvering. More cannon fire. We get in a stern shot (a disabling shot intended to take out the opponent’s rudder). In amongst all the maneuverings, we blast a few tourist boats that are following every move of our two lumbering square riggers (the tourists appreciate the attention). Finally, the Lady Washington turns and heads home, we give chase (what, done so soon?), bringing a cannon to the bow and continuing to blast her all the way back to the dock.
Did I mention this is no place for recovering pacifists?
So, points totaled. We win! The Lady’s captain concedes, turning over his sword to us, the victors. We however, notice that this sword is rusted and not at all shiny, quite the disgrace, so one of our guys spends his free evening (and this is in the land-of-very-little-free-time) polishing it up till it looks brand new, and we take it back the next day (when they win the battle).
Evening – Dinner, muster, get everything shipshape, sometimes a sunset sail, sometimes various duties (like lookout, galley duty, bilge checks, taking down the flags, making sure we’re not sinking or drifting, polishing your opponent’s sword, that sort of thing), and free time, drinking, and karaoke.
Yeti (Rotweiller mix) and Earl The Girl (daughter of Yeti) come to visit. Oh yeah, their owner, too. Brecken. They were on board last week. Brecken never let us slip on our study of the new language of sailing, drilling us over and over. She and Sabrina (another woman sailor/acrobat/circus performer) saved my life in the rigging by letting me go slowly and showing me again and again how to tie a gasket (when I’m fifty feet in the air, my attention is not fully focused on the learning at hand and I’m feeling a bit catatonic and my hands are gripping the jackstays for dear life), and they would just smile and say don’t worry, rolling their eyes and telling me with a look that everything’s okay, even when our first mate is yelling that we have precisely two minutes to finish and get back on deck.
Night – sleep, except for the nights we are moored out somewhere and someone is up on deck on watch at all times, that someone being woken up in the bunk next to yours (they are all next to yours) at every hour on the hour (actually at ten minutes before the hour to be precise). But really, these bunks are so cozy, and they are the only space on the boat that is your private space – they are built along the hull, and are where all your worldly possessions are stored as well, and you can’t sit up or you’ll crack you head on the bunk above, or the ceiling, so claustrophobia would not be a good thing to bring on board with you, as it would have to reside in your bunk as well…
Statistics for the Hawaiian Chieftain:
64 ton topsail ketch
built in Lahaina, launched June, 1988
draft: 5’6”
sails: 4200 ft2
beam: 21’9”
mast: 75’
loa (length at waterline) 103’9”
lod (length of deck) 65’
Shopping Excursion – in which Nancy and Marc learn about American culture and prove their naivete:
November, 2010.
So we need a TV. What? A TV you say? Who needs a TV? You mean like you need a thneed? No, no, no, well maybe, but let’s not get overzealous. We LOVE movies. Good movies of course. And a family of three watching a movie while huddled around a tiny, old computer just doesn’t cut it – especially the darker scenes, and I’m not talking plot here, where unless your head is at just the right angle to the screen, all you see are some weirdly outlined glowing shadows moving, and it sort of takes the feeling, or suspense, or comprehension, or ability-to-follow-what-the-heck-is-going-on out of it. So you end up shoving the person next to you so that they drop their popcorn and you almost drop your drink and you hear a few “Ow!”s and “Stop shoving!”s and your heads crack together as you all are trying to move to that one spot in the ether where the picture is clear…
So we need a TV.
Conversation at breakfast:
Hey look, there’s a flat screen TV on sale at Target. $250.00 off!
Wow, that sounds good. When?
Day after Thanksgiving. Should we get it?
Yeah. Let’s go early, to make sure we get one (we have noticed the “limited to stock on hand” small print in the ad). Oh look, they open at 4:00 a.m. that day. Who would be shopping at 4:00 a.m.?
Nobody I know.
Me neither.
You really want to go at 4:00 a.m.?
Sure. A nice uncrowded time to shop!
Raina: You guys are crazy.
So we get up in the middle of the night and drive up to Target (Raina chooses to opt out of this new experience), humming happily about our soon-to-be great deal in TV shopping.
No traffic at this time of night. I mean morning.
Close to Target, suddenly there is traffic. Hmmmm.
Then we see it. There’s a line-up of excited, wet (it’s been raining all night), insane (okay, so that qualifier is an opinion rather than an observation) shoppers, THOUSANDS of them, snaking around the block, waiting for the doors to open. It’s not even 4:00 a.m., yet there are thousands of people here; some have been here all night.
So we park and hang out on the stairs by the entry door with the other latecomers. The atmosphere is jovial. The snake is making its way inside now, and as we latecomers wait for the tail to come in sight (it never does), we see a number of “our” TVs going by in shopping carts. Hey it’s only 4:05 a.m.! The guy directing traffic is momentarily distracted when someone asks him a question. The throng of latecomers takes the advantage and surges into the flow, and by the time the traffic guy realizes what has happened, it’s too late, and he gives up. After all, you can’t stop a river, and besides, it’s a friendly river, very well mannered so far. I know I’ve moved from the metaphor of a snake to a river, without any good transition, but really, as soon as it started moving, that snake became a river. We ride that river straight to the electronics department. It is now 4:10 a.m. And…you guessed it. Swept away. Down the river. Each and every one of them.
We head home with no TV, but with a greater appreciation for the stamina of the American shopper.
Later that day, I buy a great TV at Goodwill for $20.00.
Sure glad we were last in line.
A typical day on the Hawaiian Chieftain.
8:00 a.m. Breakfast
I get up at 7:59 ½ a.m., roll out of my bunk in the main hold, slap on the sandals, clothes are already on as I’ve slept in them for the past ten days, head to the galley for hot coffee, fruit, toast, and an array of highly caloric delectables that you cannot resist. Too few calories on this boat and you might have mutiny, not to mention hey what a crab and ho what a crab, hey ho crabby crabby ho ho crab – ask me and I’ll sing it for you sometime.
8:05 Breakfast muster in the aft cabin.
We take our coffee and calories to the back of the boat for the morning meeting. One of the crew is leaving today – on to a better, bigger, more expensive (and better paying) boat – so we sing the goodbye song – here’s to Noah, here’s to Noah, here’s to Noah he’s a horse’s ass. He’s the meanest (meanest!), sucks the horse’s….let’s just stop there shall we?
Next – Chores. (When to brush teeth? Pee? Comb hair?)
Chores consist of sanitizing, shining, and spit polishing every inch of the boat, from the fo’c’s’le (sailors like apostrophes) to the heads to the main cabin, to the brass. Every day. Every single day.
10:00 – 1:00 Dock Tours and Maintenance.
We are assigned stations and take turns hanging out on the dock, the quarterdeck, or the foredeck, welcoming visitors and answering questions. We are dressed in our cool 18th century sailor outfits. You can imagine how good we look when the nickname for the knickers is “pumpkin butt pants.” But we feel like Captain Jack Sparrow, just need a few danglies in our hair.
When not on tour duty, we are doing maintenance – such as sanding and varnishing (maybe a 2 on the fun scale) or tarring the standing rigging (definitely a 10, even though it blows the top off the messy-ness scale).You get to climb up into the rigging with a rag and a bottle of goopy tar, and wipe and massage it into every nook and cranny of the standing rigging (for weather protection and strength). Needless to say it gets into every nook and cranny of your clothes and body. Well, we need strength and protection from the weather too.
Talking about strength, these 20-somethings that crew this boat are in a universe of their own. They can do pushups galore – me, I can do, maybe, on a really good day, one. Barely. I can get out a few more if I cheat and do girl’s pushups. And these guys climb ropes and rigging like monkeys, like you see in the movies and think it’s all a trick of the lens (in fact our first mate was in Master and Commander), they can haul on lines that I can barely move even when I hang my entire weight upon them, they can fix a snagged line or a jammed pulley seventy-five feet above the deck as we roll and lurch through wind and waves, they know the names and functions of four miles of line (rope) and forty thousand slang terms – the ratlines, the gantlines, the buntlines, the leeches, the sheets, the running rigging – say that one ten times fast. (And you don’t say ratLINE, you say ratLIN’, gantlin’, buntlin’.) They climb over the futtocks with ease (I know that sounds a wee bit R-rated, but actually, the futtocks is kind of an overhang you have to climb up and over when ascending the masts to work aloft.) And after all this macho behavior (including drinking and wenching and tattoos) they are always ready for a game of Contact, a word game that seems so NON-tough, so utterly NORMAL that the normal seems ludicrous. I bet Captain Jack played Contact. Really, it’s just like the movies.
2:00 – 5:00 Battle Sail with the Lady Washington.
“All hands. Cast gaskets for the course, mains’l, upper, lower, inner, outer, mizzen, mizzen tops’l!” That’s eight sails we’re to get ready. One day, the order was, “If it has a gasket, cast it,” and we put up almost every sail we have (thirteen out of fifteen).
Six of us climb into the rigging to unfurl the sails. We’re underway, out of the marina now, motoring into the bay, with a boatload of people ready to battle the Lady Washington. Me, I’ll go up last. I figure then I’ll be working lower down and closer to the mast. My plan goes awry when I’m the first to the shrouds (that you climb up) and have no good reason for hanging about waiting on deck. Up I go, over the futtocks, onto the upper shrouds, all the way up to the Upper Topsail. Whoa. But, we’re so busy working out on the yards (the “square” part of a square rigger), I don’t have time to notice the swaying of the boat, or the height above the water, or the fact that I’ve just helped unfurl the sails on a SQUARE RIGGED SHIP (boat actually) and dressed the part to boot! Is this reality? Back on deck, (“On deck, aye!”), my heart races with adrenaline, and I’m ready for the next task. I’m hearing commands rattled off and repeated, “Hands to braces!” “Let go and haul!” “Turns on upper, turns on lower, turns on all!” “Sheet home mizzen!” “Tack upper tops’l!” “Prepare to come about!” “Let luff heads’ls!” “Pass heads’ls!” “Sheet home heads’ls!” “Prepare to wear ship!” “Board sheet heads’ls!” (As I’ve said before, everything on board is said with an exclamation point!) We’re running about, shouting back orders, raising and lowering, hauling those yards (naturally with a halyard!), tightening and turning, shouting responses.
I glance up and see the Lady Washington off our starboard bow. We’re trying to maneuver so that our guns (cannons) are pointed at her, but hers are not pointed at us. Our captain is sneaky and fakes out the Lady. We’re finally in position. It’s now or never. “Prepare for gunfire!” Everyone on board plugs their ears. There’s an explosion, and a blast of smoke. The two boats pass, seeming within arms reach of each other. More maneuvering. More cannon fire. We get in a stern shot (a disabling shot intended to take out the opponent’s rudder). In amongst all the maneuverings, we blast a few tourist boats that are following every move of our two lumbering square riggers (the tourists appreciate the attention). Finally, the Lady Washington turns and heads home, we give chase (what, done so soon?), bringing a cannon to the bow and continuing to blast her all the way back to the dock.
Did I mention this is no place for recovering pacifists?
So, points totaled. We win! The Lady’s captain concedes, turning over his sword to us, the victors. We however, notice that this sword is rusted and not at all shiny, quite the disgrace, so one of our guys spends his free evening (and this is in the land-of-very-little-free-time) polishing it up till it looks brand new, and we take it back the next day (when they win the battle).
Evening – Dinner, muster, get everything shipshape, sometimes a sunset sail, sometimes various duties (like lookout, galley duty, bilge checks, taking down the flags, making sure we’re not sinking or drifting, polishing your opponent’s sword, that sort of thing), and free time, drinking, and karaoke.
Yeti (Rotweiller mix) and Earl The Girl (daughter of Yeti) come to visit. Oh yeah, their owner, too. Brecken. They were on board last week. Brecken never let us slip on our study of the new language of sailing, drilling us over and over. She and Sabrina (another woman sailor/acrobat/circus performer) saved my life in the rigging by letting me go slowly and showing me again and again how to tie a gasket (when I’m fifty feet in the air, my attention is not fully focused on the learning at hand and I’m feeling a bit catatonic and my hands are gripping the jackstays for dear life), and they would just smile and say don’t worry, rolling their eyes and telling me with a look that everything’s okay, even when our first mate is yelling that we have precisely two minutes to finish and get back on deck.
Night – sleep, except for the nights we are moored out somewhere and someone is up on deck on watch at all times, that someone being woken up in the bunk next to yours (they are all next to yours) at every hour on the hour (actually at ten minutes before the hour to be precise). But really, these bunks are so cozy, and they are the only space on the boat that is your private space – they are built along the hull, and are where all your worldly possessions are stored as well, and you can’t sit up or you’ll crack you head on the bunk above, or the ceiling, so claustrophobia would not be a good thing to bring on board with you, as it would have to reside in your bunk as well…
Statistics for the Hawaiian Chieftain:
64 ton topsail ketch
built in Lahaina, launched June, 1988
draft: 5’6”
sails: 4200 ft2
beam: 21’9”
mast: 75’
loa (length at waterline) 103’9”
lod (length of deck) 65’
Shopping Excursion – in which Nancy and Marc learn about American culture and prove their naivete:
November, 2010.
So we need a TV. What? A TV you say? Who needs a TV? You mean like you need a thneed? No, no, no, well maybe, but let’s not get overzealous. We LOVE movies. Good movies of course. And a family of three watching a movie while huddled around a tiny, old computer just doesn’t cut it – especially the darker scenes, and I’m not talking plot here, where unless your head is at just the right angle to the screen, all you see are some weirdly outlined glowing shadows moving, and it sort of takes the feeling, or suspense, or comprehension, or ability-to-follow-what-the-heck-is-going-on out of it. So you end up shoving the person next to you so that they drop their popcorn and you almost drop your drink and you hear a few “Ow!”s and “Stop shoving!”s and your heads crack together as you all are trying to move to that one spot in the ether where the picture is clear…
So we need a TV.
Conversation at breakfast:
Hey look, there’s a flat screen TV on sale at Target. $250.00 off!
Wow, that sounds good. When?
Day after Thanksgiving. Should we get it?
Yeah. Let’s go early, to make sure we get one (we have noticed the “limited to stock on hand” small print in the ad). Oh look, they open at 4:00 a.m. that day. Who would be shopping at 4:00 a.m.?
Nobody I know.
Me neither.
You really want to go at 4:00 a.m.?
Sure. A nice uncrowded time to shop!
Raina: You guys are crazy.
So we get up in the middle of the night and drive up to Target (Raina chooses to opt out of this new experience), humming happily about our soon-to-be great deal in TV shopping.
No traffic at this time of night. I mean morning.
Close to Target, suddenly there is traffic. Hmmmm.
Then we see it. There’s a line-up of excited, wet (it’s been raining all night), insane (okay, so that qualifier is an opinion rather than an observation) shoppers, THOUSANDS of them, snaking around the block, waiting for the doors to open. It’s not even 4:00 a.m., yet there are thousands of people here; some have been here all night.
So we park and hang out on the stairs by the entry door with the other latecomers. The atmosphere is jovial. The snake is making its way inside now, and as we latecomers wait for the tail to come in sight (it never does), we see a number of “our” TVs going by in shopping carts. Hey it’s only 4:05 a.m.! The guy directing traffic is momentarily distracted when someone asks him a question. The throng of latecomers takes the advantage and surges into the flow, and by the time the traffic guy realizes what has happened, it’s too late, and he gives up. After all, you can’t stop a river, and besides, it’s a friendly river, very well mannered so far. I know I’ve moved from the metaphor of a snake to a river, without any good transition, but really, as soon as it started moving, that snake became a river. We ride that river straight to the electronics department. It is now 4:10 a.m. And…you guessed it. Swept away. Down the river. Each and every one of them.
We head home with no TV, but with a greater appreciation for the stamina of the American shopper.
Later that day, I buy a great TV at Goodwill for $20.00.
Sure glad we were last in line.
August in Utah – in which we go DOWN THE RIVER one more time, and the rains wash out the access road the VERY day we finish our year-long travels (nothing left but the trip home) and are leaving Moab to return to “regular” life.
Green River. Crystal Geyser to Mineral Bottom.
Summer is a different scene on the river. It has been alternately a zoo, and incredibly peaceful. We’ve seen very few single canoes – there’s more of a “vacation” atmosphere, loud, boisterous, busy groups being social. More noise, more people (or maybe the noise just makes it seem like more people) – boy scouts (at least three groups, and don’t let me get started on boy scouts), families, rafters heading for the big waters of Cataract Canyon on the Colorado, the “slow canoeists,” (our term of endearment for a group of five canoes that just drift and seem to go even slower than the current, no matter what, and so we play leap frog with them numerous times), but today the crowds have been washed down the river. We are alone. It is quiet. Not even bug noises (too hot out).
We’ve had most nights with no one but the crickets and the stars, the occasional mosquito, and lots of bats. Have you ever been dive-bombed by bats? A little heart-stopping, until you realize that they are not dive-bombing YOU, but are after all the tasty bugs that are swarming you, and you are in an area with low tree branches, so not much maneuverability for the little bat guys, but they do, as you know, an outstanding job of flying in the dark, and their little bat shapes flap wildly out of nowhere right at the tip of your nose, gobbling those bugs which have been annoying you all evening. All the same, a bit disconcerting, and I retire to a big rock by the river, where the bats have more space and I can recover from my apparent heart attack before anyone is the wiser.
One windy evening, we carried our sleeping bags up to the rimrock to sleep. It was the height of the Perseids, and we wanted uninterrupted sky. We lay on the warm bare rock and didn’t know where to look. How do you contain the whole sky in your eyes? How do you switch on the wide-angle? We saw shooting star after shooting star, tails glittering in our eyesight long past the reality, and glimpsed many more on the edge of vision. The clouds of the day, now all piled to the east and south, were breaking up, the dark shreds as they passed momentarily veiling our view into the cosmos, like interstellar dust, opaque yet somehow transparent. We could see distant lightning, but heard no thunder, only the sound of the relentless wind sighing across the bare rock and roaring down into the canyons, blowing the tattered sky and the occasional untethered bandana (the latter precipitating a small shriek and careful barefoot scamper to retrieve the blown article) and the Perseid meteor shower continued unabated amongst the clouds and Jupiter and Andromeda and the millions of stars which form our vision of the Milky Way. In the middle of the night, the wind stopped, and the stars were brilliant.
It’s really the stars that stay with us. They were with us in the Himalayas, on the beach in Thailand, in the jungles of Cambodia, everywhere we’ve gone, but never more spectacularly than here, in the canyons of Utah.
And so we come to the end of the tale, or is it the beginning?...
The last page of my journal reads: “…and the STARS! They’ve been the most spectacular thing of all. It’s been a new moon (growing each day, but setting not long after the sun) and so the sky is dark, the canyon walls are black, and the stars are silver and sparkle and glimmer – and there are so many of them they fool your eyes, for just as you look away you see more (yes, the ol’ rods and cones thing) and the stars sparkle ALL THE WAY DOWN to the horizon. The canyons here, in the upper section, are not so deep, so we usually have lots of sky. And the shooting stars! Streaking across the sky leaving glimmering tales that slowly fade out – stardust amid the glowing nebulous Milky Way – and you take binoculars and look at that glowing nebulous cloud of stardust and see…MORE STARS than you can imagine! And there’s the Andromeda Galaxy, two million light years off, and Jupiter with its moons, and…”
And there it ends. Amid the stars.
We drove out of Utah in a deluge. It was midday. We turned on the car lights. As we drove north in silence, we looked back at the black skies, the pelting rains, the flashing lightning, and felt the accompanying booms echoing in our souls. It was the very end of our trip, even though it took weeks and weeks to get “home.” We’re still on our way.
Green River. Crystal Geyser to Mineral Bottom.
Summer is a different scene on the river. It has been alternately a zoo, and incredibly peaceful. We’ve seen very few single canoes – there’s more of a “vacation” atmosphere, loud, boisterous, busy groups being social. More noise, more people (or maybe the noise just makes it seem like more people) – boy scouts (at least three groups, and don’t let me get started on boy scouts), families, rafters heading for the big waters of Cataract Canyon on the Colorado, the “slow canoeists,” (our term of endearment for a group of five canoes that just drift and seem to go even slower than the current, no matter what, and so we play leap frog with them numerous times), but today the crowds have been washed down the river. We are alone. It is quiet. Not even bug noises (too hot out).
We’ve had most nights with no one but the crickets and the stars, the occasional mosquito, and lots of bats. Have you ever been dive-bombed by bats? A little heart-stopping, until you realize that they are not dive-bombing YOU, but are after all the tasty bugs that are swarming you, and you are in an area with low tree branches, so not much maneuverability for the little bat guys, but they do, as you know, an outstanding job of flying in the dark, and their little bat shapes flap wildly out of nowhere right at the tip of your nose, gobbling those bugs which have been annoying you all evening. All the same, a bit disconcerting, and I retire to a big rock by the river, where the bats have more space and I can recover from my apparent heart attack before anyone is the wiser.
One windy evening, we carried our sleeping bags up to the rimrock to sleep. It was the height of the Perseids, and we wanted uninterrupted sky. We lay on the warm bare rock and didn’t know where to look. How do you contain the whole sky in your eyes? How do you switch on the wide-angle? We saw shooting star after shooting star, tails glittering in our eyesight long past the reality, and glimpsed many more on the edge of vision. The clouds of the day, now all piled to the east and south, were breaking up, the dark shreds as they passed momentarily veiling our view into the cosmos, like interstellar dust, opaque yet somehow transparent. We could see distant lightning, but heard no thunder, only the sound of the relentless wind sighing across the bare rock and roaring down into the canyons, blowing the tattered sky and the occasional untethered bandana (the latter precipitating a small shriek and careful barefoot scamper to retrieve the blown article) and the Perseid meteor shower continued unabated amongst the clouds and Jupiter and Andromeda and the millions of stars which form our vision of the Milky Way. In the middle of the night, the wind stopped, and the stars were brilliant.
It’s really the stars that stay with us. They were with us in the Himalayas, on the beach in Thailand, in the jungles of Cambodia, everywhere we’ve gone, but never more spectacularly than here, in the canyons of Utah.
And so we come to the end of the tale, or is it the beginning?...
The last page of my journal reads: “…and the STARS! They’ve been the most spectacular thing of all. It’s been a new moon (growing each day, but setting not long after the sun) and so the sky is dark, the canyon walls are black, and the stars are silver and sparkle and glimmer – and there are so many of them they fool your eyes, for just as you look away you see more (yes, the ol’ rods and cones thing) and the stars sparkle ALL THE WAY DOWN to the horizon. The canyons here, in the upper section, are not so deep, so we usually have lots of sky. And the shooting stars! Streaking across the sky leaving glimmering tales that slowly fade out – stardust amid the glowing nebulous Milky Way – and you take binoculars and look at that glowing nebulous cloud of stardust and see…MORE STARS than you can imagine! And there’s the Andromeda Galaxy, two million light years off, and Jupiter with its moons, and…”
And there it ends. Amid the stars.
We drove out of Utah in a deluge. It was midday. We turned on the car lights. As we drove north in silence, we looked back at the black skies, the pelting rains, the flashing lightning, and felt the accompanying booms echoing in our souls. It was the very end of our trip, even though it took weeks and weeks to get “home.” We’re still on our way.
The beginning of the end.
"Come hear the silence..."
See ya.