Reflections

Lake Mead, Arizona

December 18, 2004

    Warblers hang from the branches like Christmas tree ornaments piping single-note peeps. I hear them as I stuff the cargo holds with gear and provisions. I launched from Hemingway Harbor. The lake was serene. I paddled to Hoover Dam, and circled back. I camped on an island.

    A half-moon rises over Fortification Hill which I see across the lake. God says, “Look what’s up here and say thank you.” Alluvial deposits bracket the walls of the hill like flying buttresses. It was a volcano once.

December 19, 2004

    I’m ensconced in a cove, sheltered from the wind. Wispy cirrus clouds preceded the cold front that has crept in. I noticed. I noticed the male and female merganser paddling to shore. Where the canyon narrows, the winds were driving and strong. I grunted and dug the paddle into the windswept waves. I was flanked by steep cliffs. Intimidating.

    I thought I’d be happy to have the lake to myself, but I longed for company and thought of turning back. The longer I stay, though, the more I’ll appreciate the company of family and friends when I return home.

    Fish disturb the placid surface of the lake. I sleep, but am wakened by the hooting of the great horned owl. Who-whoo-whooo resounds across the cove. Cassiopeia and Pegasus glisten in the night sky. I seek out Andromeda and find her. She is the only galaxy visible to the naked eye. Andromeda looks like a smudged star.  

    That night, I dreamt that my sisters kept happiness logs. Throughout the day, they kept track of their happiness. I wake up hours later. My nose and face wear the cold of the night. The constellations have moved. Now, I see Gemini and know that Saturn twinkles among the stars.

December 21

    I launched early. The sky was overcast. But the rising sun scattered the clouds, and the wind agitated the waves. I wish I knew more about clouds so that I could retell the story faithfully.

    I lashed the spare paddle to starboard. Bad idea. Paddlesful of cold water began flooding the cockpit. I turned into the wind and hastened to the nearest shore.

    How deceived I was when I launched this morning- and a bit foolish. I knew that conditions were unpredictable, that the desert winds were fickle and fierce. I’m relieved though. I’d rather be here than out there in the frothing, white-capped lake. I am not here to test my endurance, but to enjoy my vacation. I did not come to be cold, wet, and apprehensive, but to be still, quiet, and relaxed. I may not paddle the length of the lake, as I had planned, but I may enjoy a greater reward.

    My only concern is that there isn’t much to do. But there’s much to see and explore. As dad would say, “If you’re bored, it’s because you’re boring.”

   

    About 50 meters from shore is a sandy basin. I noticed hooved prints and piles of scat. I follow the tracks along the shoreline and into the desert, but retreat after a mile. I sit for hours observing the sky, listening, cataloging plants.

    A bevy of bugs distract me. They hum Mendelssohn’s “Flight of the Bumblebee.” They whirl like dervishes. They fly backwards then soar in figure eights. Tiny, winged capoiera dancers. It’s unchoreographed, but synchronous. They whirl and dive together. The dancing bands would inevitably break up and the dancers would fly off each their separate ways. I followed a few individuals. Some joined new troupes. Like them, I too feel a longing to belong. A bevy of bugs interrupt my reveries as if to say, “Hey, don’t be sad. Look at us!” Strings open with the “Flight of the Bumblebee.”

    I’m happy to be here. I’m happy to abandon my schedule which strikes me now as exhausting and oppressive. Slow and leisurely is the better pace. Why paddle until the wrists swell and the shoulders ache. Where’s the peace?

   

    The wind’s a bully. I tethered every loose thing to the kayak or stowed it in the hatches. The wind is a thief in the night and will snatch any unsecured thing. A waxing gibbous moon stands sentinel tonight.

    Only three boaters passed this way today. They motored passed in a desperate sort of way. They ply across the lake at breakneck speed.

    I am alert. My senses are keener. My body follows a natural rhythm. This body, evolved and hammered into its present shape by the elements, sloughs off city fat. I rise when the Yellow Emperor begins his procession in the east, and retire when it sets over the craggy mountain peaks in the west. My rhythms are circadian, timed with the rising and setting of the sun. Curiously, I find that I can get by with fewer hours of sleep.     

    My diet consists of colors: yellow bananas, orange nectarines, red apples, brown seeds, fleshy white peaches. I trowel fat on my bones with peanut butter and pad my muscles with protein from fish. I take bread and Gatorade and Power Bars and keep my body loaded with carbs.

    Like a pack of wild hyenas, the winds stalk at night, jabbing and poking at my tent, gnashing their teeth. I dream we had gorilla-cows in our yard and I met a college student named Neh’ru-independiente.

    I woke up at 6:45. It’s 8:50. I scribbled in my journal, sang, pooped. Had this been a workday, I would have leapt out of bed, relieved myself, showered, shaved, eaten breakfast, brushed my teeth, ironed my clothes, left for work, reviewed the day’s lessons, and taught my first class. That is too hectic and feverish a pace. It’s an oppressive schedule; it’s unnatural.

    I wash, and prepare breakfast. Happiness quotient: 9.

    The wind is seething. Fine grains of sand breach the mesh. Would that I could shut off the wind; but all I can do is shut off the thoughts that complain about the wind. Thin cirrus clouds appeared in the north. It’s 2:15. My students would have been dismissed.

     The finches flock to the shrubs by the shore. They are not encumbered by obligations or bossed about by schedules or bothered to report for jury duty or ordered to pay taxes or interview for jobs or apply to universities or pay down mortgages. They live simply. “Consider the birds of the field, they sow not, neither do they reap…”

    After dinner I practice qi gong exercises to the rhythm of the setting sun. The winds have abated, the lake is calm. 

    What unimaginable sufferings will others endure today, even now as I sit? 

    I came well prepared: a paddle (plus spare), a GPS unit (plus spare), a camel pack, cell phone and charger, box cutter, a Smith and Wesson, tent, sleeping bag, mattress, neoprene suit, water-repellant jacket, sweater, skull caps, hiking boots, sandals, socks, hiking pants, 3 pairs of underwear, t-shirt, long-billed hat, backpack, first aide kit, baby wipes, binoculars, 3 books, sunscreen, toothbrush, floss kit, Listerine, liquid soap, a towel, a life jacket, whistle and safety mirror, garbage bags, Ziploc bags, a dry suit, a miner’s headlamp and batteries, a map, nail clippers, razor and blades, and bungee chords. A minimalist could get away with much less.

December 23

    The ravens put on the most spectacular and entertaining aerial show I have ever seen! They dove and banked in synchrony. I clapped and cheered when they flew upside down, cart wheeling in the sky. Their wings swooshed as they cut through the air. They caw and pirouette in the rising currents. I listen and notice that they have a variety of calls: they croak, gurgle, and caw. Their caws vary. Sometimes they are curt, sometimes long, sometimes low, sometimes high. 

    “You’re nuts!” a crow caws. The other crows laugh their raucous laugh, “Caw, caw, caw!”

    I woke up at 4:30 am. Ursa Major was directly overhead. I broke camp and launched when the sun rose. The sea was choppy. I was agitated. I saw finches flying into the wind. Can they be stronger than me? I chided myself. Then I considered that the raw elements: the sun, the sea, the wind, the earth, had hammered man into his present form. I am of Viking stock, of the Chumash, a sea-faring Polynesian, Maori. We were all born from the same ancestor. I roused the fighting spirit.  I changed my name to Nehru-Independiente. I paddled for 7 hours.

   

    There are at least 2 types of fear: one is rational and should be heeded, the other is illogical and should be tamed. Fear keeps us alive. It alerts us to danger, it tempers exuberant recklessness. We fear things that could kill or harm us. But most are irrational. 

Jack Lockett was an Australian who lived to be over 100. when asked what he attributed his longevity to, he said, “My main message is not to worry. Worry would kill anybody. I never worry.”

Fear is a nuisance that prevents us from reaching our goals.

Tristan Jones

   

    Occasionally, cold waves of water spilled onto my lap. My legs and feet were numb with cold. I didn’t realize how cold until I beached at Sandy Cove and tried to walk. My legs buckled. I could hardly stand. I used the paddle as a crutch. I called home and got a weather report. Santa Ana winds were blowing. Winds were approaching gale force.

    I was tucked away in a sheltered cove near Calville Harbor. It was littered with debris. I collected most of it. Some of the items were partially buried. Others had decomposed. I found a wrench that disintegrated into flakes when I kicked it with my toe. And so will all of man’s great cities and works be turned to dust, only to morph into rock or swallowed up by the earth and melted in a thick molten soup.

    A coyote was silhouetted against the darkness.

    Happiness quotient: 10.  This is a quiet happiness, a joy that springs from the depths of the soul. I’m being me.  Moses, Buddha, Mohammad, and Jesus retired to the wilderness and met God. Nehru-independiente paddles into the wilderness and finds more of himself which belongs to God.

    Nature is mystical. Man is an animal, an evolved thing, as is everything belonging to man: his arts, his language, his organs, his moods, his religion, his kayak, his laptop.

    What is depression? It is an evolved thing. Of what use is it? Does it confer some survival advantage? My moods are most severe when I’m in the city. They do not weigh me down when I’m outdoors and free. In fact, that serious, introspective mood serves me well out here. It keeps me intact. It quietly instructs. There is strength in it.

    A blue-gray gnatcatcher forages in the reeds. It flicks its black tail and buzzes zhee zhee. A white crowned sparrow emerges from behind thorny tumbleweed. I sit on dried mud flats for hours. A warbler dashes into the thicket.

    I toss crackers to the ring-billed gulls. Then the mallards come and skid to a halt on orange webbed feet. The commotion attracts great-tailed grackles.

Christmas Eve

I paddled back to Hemmingway Harbor. There was an irrepressible smile etched on my face when I arrived. There was no one to welcome me. I celebrated with the gulls and fed them the last of my crackers.