Shiriri Saga#4 The Circumnavigators.

"Would you like coffee and croissants for breakfast tomorrow morning?"The laughing voice of the marina manager carried easily over the narrow space of water to our becalmed schooner. We had just pushed off on the beginning of our thirtieth wedding anniversary circumnavigation of Salt Spring Island (our island home). With our adult children on board, we were repeating our honey moon trip that we had made in the 14' scow we proudly called Isolde.


That trip had been a challenge in our tiny boat with its home made sails and chronically unreliable outboard engine and this one in Shiriri also had a decidedly improvised camping quality as well, with its broken down engine, tattered sails, and rough and as yet untouched interior. We still had our dory with its outboard to use as an engine when the wind failed however, and were primed for this modest adventure. We had owned our dreamboat ( and she was still mostly dream) for several months now and had been busy getting the exterior refinished before winter rains forced us below to begin work on remodeling the interior. The breeze filled in at last and we drew away from tomorrow`s proffered breakfast and tacked out of Fulford Harbour.
The promising breeze died by evening, but we were close to our first destination, Russell Island. The crew of Isolde had camped here on the first night of their honeymoon cruise after a day spent mostly drifting north on the tide and so I jumped into the dory to tow the short distance to the anchorage in the lee of the island. No sooner was I at the end of the tow line than I burst out laughing; there astern, was my first sight of Shiriri away from land or the marina berth. She was improbably romantic as though she had just dropped in through a time warp from the previous century.

By mid afternoon the next day Shiriri was sailing fast up Houstoun Passage between Salt Spring and a long low island called Wallace Island. Now a provincial park, it was then a private island with big "No Trespassing" signs that had the crew of Isolde getting a little desperate for a place to camp for the night. We on Shiriri had a tight time of it ourselves off the northern tip of Salt Spring, getting our sails down quickly and the dory alongside before we were blown past the little bay in which we intended to anchor. Just in time the outboard caught and we carefully inched into the bay. That night we told our grown up children of our spooky experience thirty years before, on the island we could see north of our anchorage. We had landed on Jackscrew Island in the evening, desperate by now for a camping spot and had hurried across the island to find a camp site. And then it hit us: an overpowering sadness pervaded the place and set our hair on end.We ran back to our boat, pushed away from the shore, and sailed off as fast as the breeze could carry us. We sailed in the moonlight, messed with the seagull engine to no avail and paddled half the night to finally camp on Tent island. Phew!

Day three found Shiriri sailing south past the village of Vesuvius toward a distant steep- sided narrow pass between our island and Vancouver Island. Naturally the wind headed us when we finally arrived and we tacked back and forth for a while until we reached the entrance to Maple Bay. Our shadowy former selves had tacked back and forth without gaining any distance to windward, had worked on their engine until it started and had turned in here to spend the night in a friends woodshed. The Shiriris, however, checked the tide tables and decided to try to use the last of the ebb tide to pass through Sansum Narrows before nightfall. The dory revved up and Shiriri slid forward in the calm evening light. Those narrows were so beautiful with their spectacular cliffs, but we were kept busy trying to fend the dory off and keep it from being swamped as motor boats coming the other way pounded us with their wash.

Finally, on the slack tide, we reached the southern end of the pass and looked up in a quiet moment of reflection at a roof top poking through the trees on the hillside above us. This was the Island home of Miles and Beryl Smeeton before they returned to their yacht Tzu Hang for more years of adventurous sailing. Their books had been our inspiration for years and passing this spot felt like our own true beginning. Then with our oh so useful dory and it`s engine, we just scraped around the point and cheated the gathering flood tide that was trying to sweep us back into the narrows. We anchored in Genoa Bay for the night.

On the last day of our circumnavigation, we sailed up Satellite Channel along the south side of Salt Spring. Somewhere we crossed paths with the crew of Isolde who had transited Sansum Narrows that day thirty years before. They were headed for their new apartment in Sidney, the beginning of their life together, and a year of teaching and teacher training. They don`t know it yet of course, but a year from now they will have driven across Canada to Nova Scotia and will be just about to leave for teaching jobs in Guyana, South America. Although we don`t know it yet, we will be tested with many difficulties before Shiriri`s bowsprit will meet the Pacific swells as we turn left at Cape Flattery and begin our life on the ocean wave.

Relationships.

The birds are back! The eagle perches in the tree top looking speculatively at our chickens scratching busily in the orchard. Flocks of smaller birds zoom across the sky and fill the forest with chatter. Two mallards leap into the air as I walk beside the stream. The winter silence is broken at last.
This is the last moment that winter jobs can be completed before spring arrives in earnest and calls me to prepare for an active summer. Already the orchard needs pruning and spraying before buds start to break. But wait! Another kind of pruning also calls from the forest: that big balsam fir that is dying down from the top will need to be cut down and turned into next winter`s firewood.

There is an fierce, elemental satisfaction to felling a big tree. After the careful work with chainsaw and wedges, there is a final shriek and almighty crash as it lands in a swirl of broken top and torn branches. Yes! It has landed just where I had planned. Yes!

After the trunk has been sawn into rounds, chopping them into firewood pieces begins with the heavy splitting maul. This is more like work, but here is a different kind of satisfaction: the pleasure of the body as the maul strikes the wood and the big round falls apart: the co-ordination of eye, mind and muscle all focused in one instant at one point. After a winter of mostly indoor work, I feel fully alive again.

This participation in the physical skills that make firewood without the complications of interpersonal relationships is a satisfaction I find in my little piece of forest: no bosses or deadlines controlled by something other than the season of the year. There is in this process a different kind of social contract though; a larger social relationship. This tree I`m working on is almost the same age as me. While I was being born in England during the devastation of W.W.II.,this tree was making a start amongst the broken remains of an old growth forest cut down to supply the wartime demand for raw materials. It was already a tall tree when I arrived thirty years ago and we have matured in each others company. You might say we are in a broader kind of social relationship: one that also includes my cutting it down when it`s dying top makes it a hazzard beside the trail that leads to the bottom field.

I notice that despite this fellow feeling for my age -mate I still feel a fierce pleasure in bringing it down, in cutting off it`s branches and bucking it into rounds for my axe. I am a human being after all and that glint in my eye is part of my heritage from the beginning of time. It`s the same reality for all: for us to live, others must die and I will need firewood for warmth next winter.

It is a little tricky admitting that I take such pleasure in felling trees and swinging an axe with such concentration at bits of wood. It`s not quite "nice" somehow; all that rampant pleasure in being alive and living in such an elemental way. It`s not really "civilized," this being fully human. Yet surely, if we narrow our definition of being human to that of nice thoughts and the intellect, the lusty, creative forces within us are denied legitimate expression and become stunted and undeveloped. Then we are caught off guard when they force their way into our surface lives in truly crude and nasty ways. Better by far to live in peace and companionship with our whole selves.

As I drag branches across the stream to the fire I stumble and knock the boulders that line the bank into the rushing water. As I stoop to rebuild the bank, the water is chilly without my gloves on, but I carefully rebuild the stone interlocking pattern. I have spent half my life in this intimate relationship with the basic elements: earth, air, fire and water. It has formed the way I see the world. I am part of this place: the birds that arrive, sing and raise their families, the rocky slopes covered in ferns and deep green moss, the keen air that is sifting through the forest canopy.

As the crickets soft autumn hum
Is to us
So are we to the trees
As are
they
To the rocks and the hills.
Gary Snyder.

Wooly Gone.

Today I found our feral sheep, Wooly, lying dead on the forest floor. Not unexpected, she had finally been unable to stay on her feet. Over the past couple of weeks she spent more and more time lying down and became less and less nervous of human contact. Just yesterday I made another attempt to get her on her feet but she was too weak. A bowl of water was the best we could do for her.

This is no tragedy though: she lived an unsheep-like independent life among the woods and fields and finding her stretched out in a sunbeam seemed a remarkably suitable and happy end.

Shiriri Saga#3 First voyage.

The problem with buying a boat on the mainland was that we lived on an island on the other side of the wintery Strait of Georgia and we had to get it home. There was a plus of course: it was a boat after all and could float across, but unfortunately that very low price was reflected in a broken engine and tattered sails. Before launching our new ship we painted her bottom with antifouling and as we did so we looked for the first time at the dinghy lying upside down beneath the hull. It was just a little 14` dory but we realized that here was the solution to our engine problem: with an outboard engine perched on the stern, this little boat could act as a tug to power the big schooner through the calm patches and in and out of harbour. The sails could be supplemented by ones borrowed from our catamaran. We had a plan, all we needed was a calm break between winter gales.

Heather`s brother Colin and I left the harbour one cool grey morning with the dory tied alongside for the long first voyage to the marina near our home. Our boat was large and the dory was weighted with beach rock as ballast but slowly the little ten HP engine brought us up to four knots. After several hours of motoring across the strait, the predicted northerly breeze picked up. We hoisted our assorted sails, and thankfully trailed our dinghy astern. Soon it was surfing behind us and cheerfully bumping into the splendid mahogany transom so we lengthened the tow line to calm it down. The ship felt fully alive for the first time as we lifted on the following waves and surged forward. At East Point we splashed steadily through the chaotic waves of a tide rip. I realized then that I was sailing a much bigger and more powerful boat than I was used to. She just heeled a little as we turned the corner south of Saturna Island, shrugged her shoulders, and kept going; no fuss, no muss. Only the little dory towing astern with a mighty bow wave and very wide eyes told us we were really moving along at a good pace.

The afternoon passed all too quickly as we ghosted slowly along in the lee of the islands that blocked a more direct route home and the winter night began in late afternoon. Soon we were motoring again very slowly against the tide as we groped our way through the dark between reefs and shadowy islands. I was very happy to see the marina lights at the head of our harbour at last. Happy too to have finally felt the steady and reliable personality of the ship that we would need to trust with our lives if we were to follow our dream into the bigger world.

A Shift In Conciousness.

Parting at Morning.
Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountains rim:
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.
Robert Browning.


My sketch began as a reflection on this poem by Robert Browning but continued down the page quite out of my control. You know how a DVD can suddenly break your belief in the reality of a movie story by reacting to a little dirt and breaking up into little bits of coded information? That`s what happened here: the image at the top of the page broke up into its shorthand bits: normally disguised by little strokes, the image of familiar reality shows its hidden side.


Some years ago, I had this experience without benefit of DVD. I was paddling down the Red Deer River in Alberta on a two week camping trip. It was Fall, all the birds were migrating south, the nights were crisp and the river was low. It was a lovely, evocative time of year.



Because of the low water level, my brother in law Colin and I were able to camp every night on the sand bars, but those same bars filled the river with shallows as well and our progress was impeded by continually having to get out and walk the canoe along until we came to the hidden deep water channel that meandered back and forth beneath the silty water. What I needed was to know which course the channel would take and there were no visual clues. I was an ocean canoeist and I was out of my depth.



A shift in consciousness was called for, and so, finally, I imagined myself to be the river: At first I said to myself,"If I were the river I would start to swing wide on this corner, then start to swing back and prepare for the next reverse curve," then, once I understood the hidden pattern, I found that if I could stop thinking consciously and just sink into it and react instinctively, our journey went smoothly.



This becoming part of the flow had a most fascinating and unexpected side effect. The whole landscape, not just the river, unfolded to show the deeper pattern hidden beneath the surface reality. The sand hill cranes circling in the thermals, the geese traveling in large noisy flocks, the clouds and the wind: all were wrapped in glory and spoke in solemn ringing tones. One could feel that the hidden codes of existence were, like in some Old Testament text, written by skeins of waterfowl on the screen of the sky.



So what does one do with a transcendental experience like that? Those ringing tones continued to reverberate long after the trip was over but talking about it is never all that satisfactory. " Poor guy. Out too long." You can see the unease in their eyes as they edge away from this most recent manifestation of the Ancient Mariner. Well, Its always worth a try, but I realize that the solution to my need to communicate is most productively laid into my visual communication: not as the surface image usually , but in the compositional underlay and flicker of brush strokes. That way perhaps others will experience for themselves that quality of landscape. See it! Feel it! It is dancing!

The transformation of nature in art is rendering nature phenomenon transparent
to transcendence.

Joseph Campbell.

Shiriri Saga #2. The search for the right boat.

Under a light dusting of snow, the trim little 32` steel cutter was for sale at our local wharf. "Perfect"! we thought and arranged for the owner to show it to us. We were launched into the beginning phases of making our dream of an independent sailing life come true and this first prospect was close to home.

While browsing through the boat ads, we had also been researching in sailing magazines and books to prepare for this most important of purchases. We were now ready to start looking in earnest! "Steel is good," we said, "fairly new,..." : we had a list of desirable qualities a yard long. We also expected a lot of boat for a very limited budget. There were to be difficulties ahead. This boat for example, had been built with a larger cockpit than the original design called for. That made it great for coastal summer sailing, but for our specialized oceangoing needs the original design with a smaller cockpit and larger cabin would have been best. The price was a little high.

We kept on looking for two more years: most boats were coastal boats, after all and I suspect that we were so full of book learned prejudices that we passed by some nice yachts that could have been adapted if only we could have seen their possibilities. We were ready to give up when we saw an ad. for a large, recently built, traditional wooden schooner over on the mainland. In desperation we put our specifications list to one side and off we went on the ferry.

The schooner sat on the hard and towered above the other boats. The broker was late, so we walked around her. We craned our necks to take in the long bowsprit, tall pole masts and elegant transom stern. The winter gale flapped the slime green tattered sails and from our vantage point we missed the grimy decks and cockpit partially filled with a hearty brew of seagull spiced stagnant water. People who were not as desperate as us would have run while they had the chance!

We did`nt of course. By the time the broker arrived, we had already convinced ourselves. Compared to all the many boats we had looked at, this really was a proper ship! After conducting our own survey we made a very low offer, waited for several months and she was ours.

Buying a boat is a form of falling in love. No matter what the practicalities are, if the beloved fits the seekers dream image, then all those little nagging worries about character and expensive habits are swept aside as fixable once the marriage is consumated. So it was with the schooner we came to call Shiriri and, contrary to all realistic expectations, we were rewarded in the end, with a brave and beautiful ship who would take good care of us for years to come.

Note: Mount Shiriri was not far from where we taught in the Rupununi district of Guyana. South America. We first saw it while on a camping trip with some local ranchers, Charlie and Edwina Melville, and were impressed to hear that it was a holy mountain. Only the Piaiman ( Shaman) could go to this special mountain to make all well between the Gods and the local Indian people. We were so impressed that we vowed that if we ever had a boat that could carry a name like that, we would name it Shiriri.

A very small yacht.

The battered old fiberglass canoe was labeled "FREE" and put at the curbside. With a few holes punched in it, a coat of dried green slime and with rotting seats and gunwales it was not a promising sight. My son-in-law, Tim, saw its potential though, tossed it on his truck, and gave it to me. He had remembered that I was mulling over a cross Canada canoe trip and so supplied the first essential ingredient: a beginning.

At first I rejected this canoe. That was the easy first step to not start the journey. I saw all it`s limitations quite realistically. I was not a first time boat builder and no romance would ever again sweep me off my feet! Rather than take it to the dump myself (a fairly major job on our Gulf Island) I thought some more and decided to just make the most limited of beginnings ; replace the gunwales, fix the seats and patch the holes. Then, after a coat of paint, we could keep it at a local bay and go for a paddle any time we liked. Recycling, after all, is a good thing!

While repairing the canoe, I was also completing a two year long rebuilding project on a 25' Folk Boat that I had bought in a neglected condition. This summer, a complicated redesigning and lining of the interior had called for endless patience and creative problem solving. The place I do my thinking, the back pages of my sketchbook, were full of scratchy little design drawings. One day though, to my horror, the canoe appeared in the center of a fresh white page: a sketch in the guise of fantasy, it was an answer to all my design needs for an adventure. Already it had a raised sheer line, sail, oars, an elegant figurehead, and a happy voyager. A very small yacht was smiling encouragingly at me and waiting to be launched!

My sketchbook is half full of germinating ideas for projects I have completed over the past five years since we arrived home from our Pacific sailing adventure. I can look back to see the process and always buried in the midst of detailed problem solving drawings is the first inspiration that began the whole thing. These inspirational ones are different from the rest: they are often quite complete and quite romantic. If ever there was an example of my unfettered imagination determinedly communicating with the "little engineer" practical side of myself and insisting on cooperation this has to be it!

At this point, several months later, the "little canoe that would" is well on its way to completion and is indeed the first essential step toward actualizing a long and complex canoe journey. I still think that working on that canoe project was not necessarily the best choice, but it was a choice and things will now flow onward from there. Without the canoe arriving at my front door, I could have lost my flow in the midst of possibilities and been halted at the very start of the journey.

I`m lucky to be familiar with my working style whether it is in building projects like this one or the process of creating a carving or painting. I know that it is a cooperation between all facets of myself: the dreaming self, the practical self, and most importantly, what I think of as my handy self. When I can`t imagine or problem solve my way through a stage, I let my mind go slack and just set my hands to work with the materials at hand. I think of it as giving my dreaming self a pair of hands. I have confidence in the process, so things work out. It is not a smooth road however, and not a mind set that is applicable in every situation: if I apply this creative mode to shared decision making with my wife, for example, it can drive her crazy because there is no logical step by step way of moving ahead. We can agree on a point, and then I will see more possibilities. Endless possibilities! As an intuitive thinker, I have had to learn to make the necessary transition to the next decision and to move forward. Thanks to learning that necessary step the canoe trip is free to move closer to reality.

The most difficult thing is still to make a beginning; to cast off from shore. Everything flows forward from there.

[An extended canoe expedition] " involves a starting rather than a parting.
Although it assumes the breaking of ties, its purpose is not to destroy the
past, but to lay a foundation for the future. From now on, every living act will
be built on this step, which will serve as a base long after the return of the
expedition... and until the next one."
Pierre Trudeau.

Shiriri Saga #1 A new direction.

Heather and I were nearing the end of a hostelling / backpacking holiday in Britain. We stood on a high Devonshire ridge overlooking the ocean. As we watched the sun set over the Irish Sea we were feeling a little sad, a little desperate, as our month long adventure wound down to its last few days. That brave decision that had lead to my leaving my teaching career years before and to our independent life on our Gulf Island was, in my fiftieth year, showing a few cracks. Since my Park Ranger job had disappeared with privatization, I was now working on contract as a youth and family Counselor. It was important work that I did well and which gave me a lot of insight, but it was intermittent, with poor pay and only occasional job satisfaction. At my age, in the limited job market on our little island, future prospects for an exciting life were dim and getting dimmer.

Below us was a harbour filled with fishing boats and small yachts. Like us, they were high and dry at low tide, but as we looked up and down the coast we could see interesting river mouths and other historied towns we would have loved to have had the time and money to explore. Even hostelling was too expensive for us in the long term and constant train and bus travel was well beyond our means. I think it occurred to us both at the same time, " If we had a boat we could live on board, we could travel as we please, row our dinghy up those rivers, resupply in those little towns, hike the hills and when winter comes we could move south, maybe by canal to the Mediterranean or sail to the Canary Islands."We skipped back to our separate hostel beds with our hearts uplifted and our minds abuzz with new possibilities.

What made this more than a mere pipe dream were the resources of our past experience. When still in our thirties, we had left teaching to pursue a dream of self sufficiency. We now had the experience and the skills to live inexpensively, to make what we needed, be it a boat or a house and, with our youthful volunteer teaching experience in South America behind us, to confidently begin a venture into new lands and peoples. Most importantly perhaps, we had hand-built our house and log cabin without a mortgage. Now, by renting out our property, we could have an income without being tied to a job. We had already done something similar once before when one winter we had a catamaran built for us and rented out our house. We then trailered our boat and family to Florida, sailed across to the Bahamas and spent several months camping on board and cruising among the islands with our children. We then towed our boat "Amazon" to the west coast of Mexico for a brief adventure in the Sea of Cortez and then back home to spring and my seasonal Ranger job.

Our children were now grown and independent, we were already amateur sailors, and big plans interested us and gave vitality to our lives. The problem of not having a well paying job was now, from a new perspective, our passport to freedom. We arrived home bursting to get started.

"When the way comes to an end, then change, - having changed, you will pass through."
I Ching.

Hawk High.

I found this picture in a dust covered discard pile in my studio. I have noticed that I often select the images that challenge me most to be at that hawk high place where dreams coalesce into form. Obviously, I had passed this one by.

Ink painting is eminently suited for this challenge because of the mind-set required. If what I create is going to work at all, I have to both leap off a cliff with abandon and yet remain perfectly still. The satisfactions, like the image, are subtle, interior and fulfilling.

I do understand though, why this picture was at first discarded. Its generalized tones of grey are not well defined in themselves and the symbolic bird shapes have been cut in with a razor with another sheet of rice paper placed behind. Once discarded as a failure, I now see with fresh eyes that it is the tension between the hard cut edges and the soft inky textures that really speaks to me. How often do we all dismiss as mistakes those thoughts and images that push our own limits, or we fear might not be acceptable to those around us, rather than simply welcoming them as valuable ideas pointing in directions of promise.

The sea, a wooded hillside, the strong winds and cloud layers of high places and the arrow flight of hawks are a message for me to always listen to the whispered dreams of new things striving to be born.


"And I still don`t know if I am a falcon,
Or a storm, or a great song."
Rainer Maria Rilke /1899
"I live my life."

The Falcon.

The following piece,"The Falcon," was begun last summer. I intended to submit it to a CBC Radio program called "This I believe". I planned to accomplish two objectives: by writing our sailing experience down, I would begin to understand what it meant to me and then by submitting it to the radio program I would be communicating a point of view I felt was missing in the usual human oriented perspective. Who would have thought that it would take me many months to bring nonverbal musings out into a coherent story. Only when the image of the falcon came to me did I have a core image around which to organize my fragmentary thoughts. The radio program was long over by the time this little piece felt complete.

At dawn the clouds beyond the bowsprit swirl aside and reveal faint but definitely hard jagged edges. Land! At last! After sixty six days at sea the mountain tops of Vancouver Island stretch before me. While our schooner sails herself steadily eastward I slip below to wake my wife, Heather, to take her turn on watch and I whisper the magic words "I see land!" I whisper, to avoid waking our daughter Anne, still asleep on the berth opposite. Over the past three years of our Pacific cruise we have passed this exciting message many times but this one catches at my throat. These are the hills of home and this last voyage from a coral island near the equator has been long and arduous. Even this long journey was only part of an even longer voyage from Australia. We have been sailing against contrary winds and currents for most of the way and have been ground and polished thin in mind and body.

Too excited to sleep during my own rest time below, I climb back into the cockpit when Heather calls softly .On deck there is now bright morning sunlight, sparkling wave tops and, perched just overhead on our furled mainsail, is a Peregrine Falcon ripping into the warm body of a small seabird. Just three feet away, his fierce eyes stare into ours. When he finally flies away towards the still distant land, we share a feeling of awe and say," A messenger! An omen!" and know it to be true. So close to rejoining the human race, we catch ourselves and glance thoughtfully around us and at the still half veiled land ahead. In the three years since we left home we seem to have been on an inner voyage of discovery as well.

Any journey is a stirrer up of lives, and these voyages of ours across some of the greatest watery wastes of our planet have been both a life struggle and a blessing. The ocean really is an elemental place; wind, sea ,sun and stars, served up in big impersonal portions. Big enough to swallow us up without a trace. At the beginning of our outward bound travels, as it was obvious that the ocean would not adapt to us, we began with difficulty to make our own adjustments.

Anne, our navy daughter, brought with her some basic rules of thumb. If she caught me whistling she would say, " No whistling, you will call up a wind!" The unspoken corollary being, "And it could be the gale that sinks us" Unspoken, because to name it would be bad luck too. I stop, but in a good natured smiling sort of way. I think,"Superstition!"
Away from busy shore- side thoughts, our imaginations worked overtime; flashing wave tops became distant sails and urgent imaginary voices woke us at night on our watch below. One moonlit night a big square rigged ship cut close across our bows and then dissolved into mist and shadow. We gritted our teeth and determinedly said, " Hallucinations!".

Slowly though, as we progressed through the weeks of our first long passage from Mexico to the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific we felt our awareness expand to the horizon and beyond. Those solitary night watches found us alone with the universe. The stars made us dizzy and pulled at us; our minds floated outwards. We held fast and focused on our guiding star, on Orion`s Belt perhaps, and kept it lined up with the dark edge of our big gaff foresail that pulled us along toward a dim, curved, ever receding horizon. Our minds slipped again and we were on the dark side of a stony planet on a craft that skimmed along on the interface between gas and liquid, both of which seemed to be stretched amazingly thin over the surface. We were lost in space.

One night though, a splash and a gasp startled us back to a more earthly and less celestial reality. The sea was alive with dolphins carving phosphorescent curves around and beneath the boat. Fellow creatures! Fellow mammals! Brothers!

That recognition was the beginning of the change that led us through the many long miles and months to the messenger, the Falcon.

We began our sea change where the ancients of the Mediterranean left off. Anne`s maritime superstitions were just a remnant of an old and comprehensive belief system that had served humanity for thousands of years. The Gods! That bright necklace of stars we were steering by and called Orion`s Belt was just one tiny bit of a complex of constellations that stranded the night sky with story and meaning. To have our Gods to mediate with the omnipotent powers of nature seemed the most natural thing in the world.

The next difficult transition was to finally let go of our sense of human superiority. Those Gods, Nature Spirits, Archetypes, however we liked to call them, were not ours, not beholden to us at all for their existence. They spoke, in their essence, as the voice of the whole natural world and were not merely our own human invention. Belatedly, we remembered that all the old myths told us that the Gods came first and we were the junior members. That was a hard one to swallow, even in the wilderness. We adapted though, like Odysseus before us. Once thoroughly humbled, we got the message and worked with it.

That ethos saw us as far as Australia. We did notice however, that even though we felt and worked with this truth, we did not talk about it to our fellow voyagers except in the most humorous and offhand way.

Only on that last long struggle home did we make the final transition that even here I find difficult to describe .Some things it seems, you have to experience to understand. Essentially though, it was heart, not head, that helped us into the next phase. Simple really, and yet such a major journey to step into the essence of the Gods themselves. Every morning the mighty sun sprang over the horizon and turned the morning mist to clouds, and every evening we saluted his passing in a blaze of glory. The pale moon did her monthly cycle in the heavens. How beautiful she was. That trade wind, how we were tuned to every changing note in the rigging. Our fellow creatures that swam around us, the albatross that almost brushed us with her wingtip as she ran up a breaking wave crest beside our stern, the whales that paused to greet us before diving beneath the boat, all had a special shine. I would guess that even in our tiredness we also had that shine. Relationships though, flow both ways: while we were learning to give our human love directly to this wild world, the ocean in turn, was passing a very nonhuman wildness to us; the sea was still just as dangerous, our survival still as tenuous but now in this larger perspective we accepted our fate calmly. Like the ocean itself, there were deeper currents involved in our lives, greater concerns than mere life or death. In finding a new way of being in the world we had rediscovered the most ancient one of all. We were an integral part of the mysterious and intricate web of all life and matter on the planet. Somehow we had stepped beyond a purely conventional human understanding of reality.

As with our own now fiercer eyes we watch the Falcon fly ahead of us toward the land, we definitely know we have been welcomed home. We feel a familiar but stronger, end of voyage sadness: this is the end of a Great Thing. Ahead lies our home, our familiar islands, a safe harbour, but also the terrible buzz of a self- absorbed human society that we will need to rejoin. All we can be sure of, is that we have touched ground somewhere out here long before we will reach the shore.

The Dream

In my dream, it was a dark and stormy night. Two giant birds of prey swirled around and lightning flashed from their eyes. The thunder was so loud it filled my little body. I felt torn apart. I was five or six years old, a solitary little white boy who still spoke with an English accent.

My family had recently immigrated to Canada and bought an auto court in the small B.C. coastal
village of Mill Bay. In those post World War II days, it was a full couple of hours drive north of Victoria. By far the youngest of five children, I was small enough to be overlooked in the rush of family life and so I happily filled my days wandering among the tall evergreens of the coast and playing on the beach. I played solitary little games, like seeing how far I could hop, hop, hop, from drift logs to boulders and back again without landing on gravel Sometimes I used long poles to lever and roll big logs down into the water. Soon I was building rafts and polling myself along the shore and later a mast and tarpaulin sail allowed me a greater range of travel. I fished of course, for rockfish at the near-shore reefs and for shiners through the cracks in the government wharf. I became skilled at throwing rocks at bits of driftwood or skimming flat ones to see how many skips I could get. I spent an enormous amount of time ( I had no idea of time) squatting beside tide pools and watching the miniature world of bullheads, hermit crabs, and limpets. I learned to row the family skiff around as naturally as walking. All this without benefit of life-jacket, swimming skills or adult supervision. I knew the tides and the sea-weedy smells of the breezes that blew. I loved that place.

About that time I got my first jack knife and started to whittle. I cut my fingers on a regular basis. At first, a whistle carved from a willow stick, later a spear, and then I started to carve totem poles: totem poles with the Thunderbird on the top with its wings carved separately and nailed to the back. No-one in the family remarked on this particularly, just little Billy keeping busy and out of the way. I`d not told of my dream of course: like my dangerously independent adventures on the bay, I sensibly kept this to myself. There were no words anyway in my own culture, no context within which to understand that powerful dream.

Looking back at this formative time of my early life, I wonder about what I choose to recall and give significance to. Is it simply me in the present, looking back and finding links to create a story retroactively? Maybe, but I don`t think so. The little Billy I remember is truly the essence of my present self. I`m still a poor swimmer, for example, and still mess around in boats without a life-jacket or even adult supervision. I still dream big dreams. Really of course, it is that first powerful Thunderbird dream that fascinates me. I have continued to carve throughout my life, my cedar box in which I keep my valuable stuff like journals, feathers, and interesting rocks, has the dream image carved and painted on it.

That Thunderbird dream though, surely if we believe that images like that come out of and are the story of a particular group of people, in this case the Native Indian peoples of this coast, then why me? I think that orderly ideas come out of a human-centered point of view. The other option is wilder, that the Thunderbird is a truly powerful spirit of this coast: it was here when the first peoples arrived in this land and came to know its voice and it was still here to speak to a little English boy who had slipped through his culture`s fingertips and fell into love with the spirit of this land.

Wooly sighting.

Wooly was sighted by Heather on New Years Eve. Just a casual greeting, while passing in the woods. She seemed fine, just looked over her shoulder as she headed over to Cat Hill, nodded, said g`day, the usual thing.

Cat Hill in Winter.

Fresh seeing. Fresh thinking.

Thirty-six views of Mt. Fuji

There is a problem with writing little pieces to twin with my paintings (or sometimes finding a picture to go with what I want to write about.).Everyone knows that a piece of art is a visual entity and ought to convey its essence in a visual way without benefit of language.

I was digging around in a drawer the other day, and found a gift set of postcards from a Japanese exchange student. They were compelling! A selection of five from the famous series by the wood-block print artist Hokusai, I looked at them for a long time. Mt. Fuji sometimes fills the whole frame, in others the mountain lies in the distance behind scenes from the human world; of fishermen perhaps, or forestry workers. Its always there though; through the seasons, in the minute to minute transience of sun and showers. Always there: tied intimately into the spirit of the Japanese people.

Now it turns out of course, that these splendid works of art were illustrations for a book (by Ukiyoe) about the lands around the mountain. The wood-cuts were made to go along with words after all, but I can attempt to understand them without language. The main problem really is that my mind wants to chat away while I look and surely the correct way to view them is as a meditation." Back, back, you noisy mind!" Or is this a kind of lazy thinking that automatically assumes that there is a correct way to experience anything. I find these pictures revolutionary because they ask me to see in a new way, to see deeply and freshly. If I would be true to the spirit of these paintings, I too need to let them enter my inner self just as freshly, without preconceived ideas as to how it should happen or what I should find. Across the years, the culture and the language, these images of Mt Fuji challenge my capacity for fresh seeing and fresh thinking.



I think that I am tired of oughts and corrects. They stand in the way.

Driftwood.

There is a dark side to our landscape of islands that calls most strongly in this winter season of wet cloudy short days and long nights of somber dreams. Long past is the expansive glow of flaming sunsets painting throngs of islands and glittering waterways with garlands of bright colours. Now grey seas toss sullenly under grey skies and flash white surf against black cliffs topped by forests of sober green. This island world makes time for its serious side to pace abroad and show its face.
Some of us islanders head south for more sunshine at this time of year Why not pile summer atop summer: an endless life of sunshine to keep our spirits bright. It seems a great idea if one can afford it and yet, if nature has a dark and stormy side, are we not missing developing an important aspect of our own nature if we skip out when darkness falls?
Summer too, can have its own dark side. The sunset that tints the world in golden light can twist so that the colours are just too sweet, the red arbutus bark too strident. The seagulls lonely calls can have a weird tone in the shadowy bay behind the brightly lit headland. Here the dark tide swirls high among the driftwood logs that are tumbled like bones high on the beach. To stumble on this nightmare unexpectedly on a summers evening can be more unsettling by far than meeting the dark in its own winter season.
The winter is serious, dark and stormy but it gives fair warning that we must harmonize our mood with its or, catching us in a momentary loss of focus, while boating perhaps, it will suck us down. Unlike the shadowy nightmare mood of summer though, the winter landscape is very straight forward and so, cautiously, I trust it more. I have come to respect tones of grey and muted greens both in the landscape and within myself.

To go in the dark with a light is to
Know the light.
To know the dark, go dark.
Go without sight, and find that the dark too,
Blooms and sings,
And is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
Wendell Berry.

Morning Ritual.

I have a routine on cold dark winter mornings. A new fire must be kindled in the still faintly warm wood-stove. Its an act I repeat in much the same pattern every morning. I kneel and place crumpled paper on the old ashes and follow carefully with a sequence of thin cedar splints and bits of bark. The flare of a match, a flicker of light and a few controlled puffs of breath to fan the flames. When the fire has caught I add larger pieces of wood and the ritual is completed for the day. Its chilly in the kitchen, my bare feet have sucked the cold up from the tile floor but I never wear slippers: feeling the cold reality of winter seems a necessary part of the process. I love this solitary act, this creative moment at the boundary between night and day.

The Fishing Boat.

Here is a little sketch of a Mexican fishing boat some where off the coast of Baha California. Not much, a white page, a few scratched lines, it could hardly be called a "work of art" if only because it is so ephemeral, so incomplete. For me it serves a different purpose; its very lack of polish brings it closer to the reality of perception. It is free to just be itself. It is always a miracle to me; a few scratched lines and what a minute earlier was before even thought itself has sprung living onto the page.
What I like about this shadowy little image is that it is so shaggy, so ill defined. There are so many places a viewer can get a handhold, to interact, and be drawn into the page: unfinished by design, it lives forever as potential. With our own imaginations, we can feel the quality of light that casts the ship in shadowy outline;- the shimmering pearly light of the Sea of Cortez. We can call up the crew ,their personalities, their lives when they are home again with their families ashore.
It is the subject for an ongoing meditation that it could never be if it were a painting with all the details complete; - with all the blanks filled in. It will continue always in a state of becoming.

Low tide. Crows and Seagulls.

A wide vista: a breezy afternoon at the docks, boats, a rocky breakwater, islands, blue sky. In the foreground, so easily overlooked, is a low tide mudflat, a temporary landing strip for a swirl of crows and seagulls: all wings and strident calls.
My original sketch shows none of this swirl of movement in black and white. I drew what I saw: a few crows resting on a mudflat amid the pattern of shallow breaking waves that bend as they curve around the point of the flat.
So why the change? It has much to do with working with brush and ink and a fascination with pattern. If a little is good, then a lot could be more so right? It can happen faster than I can think with a big brush on rice paper. So the brush and the paper and my hand fly along like greased lightening and suddenly there is a new entity before me. It is as much of a surprise for me as to any other viewer.

...a flight of pelicans
Is nothing lovelier to look at;
The flight of the planets is nothing nobler; all the arts loose virtue
Against the essential reality
Of creatures going about their business among the equally
Ernest elements of nature.
"Boats in a Fog."
Robinson Jeffers.

Rockface

A canoe glides along beside an ocean shore. The bow paddler pauses in his rhythm and nods towards a distant headland."There, at the base of that cliff. Bear!" Later, closer,"Rock! Now a rock."If these are indigenous peoples in the canoe, this would not be a natural mistake in perception ("For a minute it looked like a bear but my imagination was playing tricks on me") but rather that the perception never changed, the thing observed did: it transformed from bear to rock.
This way of experiencing the world as transformational is, or was, the norm among many peoples around the world. Not hard to understand intellectually, but difficult for those of us raised in a different world view to blend with our own. They are wildly divergent ways of understanding the world but create an interesting tension when they occur together.
Only after finishing and living with this ink painting for a while, did I see the face in the rocky cliff in the foreground. Its one of those figure ground images: either you see the rock or the face, it flickers back and forth. At first I resented this intrusion into a painting of a favourite family camping spot on Portland Island. It was not in my plan. Then I thought about this transforming image and realized how much I rely on being open to the unbidden, the unexpected. If I take control and paint this out I will be negating the greater truth that`s trying to speak through this painting. Even in a landscape so closely associated in my mind with intimate family memories, there still resonate other older perceptions and ways of seeing. There is a depth here to which I need to pay attention.

Flow.

We have had our second winter storm. First, wet heavy snow weighed down and broke trees and branches. Then a powerful warm front came in with heavy rain and warm south-east winds causing rapid melting and flooding. Finally with the following cold front we had a last wild bout of strong gusty west winds and wild waves.
At these times the people of the coast know the world as flux; the solid certainties and rational predictabilities of daily life and work interrupted by the storm sweeping in from the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean. Perhaps its not such a bad thing to be reminded that life is in its essence all flow and that once forced out of our life routines we can feel the movement of the larger natural world of which we are a part. Uncomfortable yes, but liberating.
In this drawing of two companion islands I show a real solid rocky place, that is also part of the ocean of ever moving sea and air. The sandstone shores are carved and shaped by the waves. The trees, bushes and grasses feel the salt spray and grow formed by the winds of winter. If we think about this relationship at all, the chances are we will think we must frame it within a scientific perspective: weather fronts, erosion ( even glaciation.),and all of the complex biological processes busily at work. I find though, that if I am to make a picture of flow and movement I must reach for another set of tools, a way of thinking, that permits me to feel my way into my subject. That stepping out of the world of culture that we experience in the midst of a storm, the feeling of being part of the wild world, is the mind space I reach for. Empathy is usually thought of as applying to a deeper understanding of other human beings but I do find it answers for my art as well. That alternate tool box of intuition, emotions, passion and spirit holds the key to the Dragon`s gate.

Knowledge does not enrich us; it removes us more and more from the mythic world in which we were once at home by right of birth.
Carl Jung.

Salty sea breeze

The afternoon sea breeze funnels up the narrow bay creating small crested waves that pant rhythmically as they hit the beach. Higher up the shingle are rounded driftwood logs, a dense salal covered bank and a magnificent grove of big alder trees leaning fulsomely into the wind.
This is parkland, no waterfront homes, no marina, just a secluded little bay, a salty sea breeze and the natural sounds that belong to it. When I was a Park Ranger I walked along this bay often as part of my duties, in all seasons, at all hours, but it is this particular scene that tugs sharply at my memory. Those alders leaning into the briskly flowing air, their fluttering leaves filling the bay with sweet sound and flickering light, the steady beat of the waves on the beach; it was all so fecund, so full of life. And I, trotting purposely along in my uniform and wearing my Ranger hat, was pulled out of myself for that moment and felt the lovemaking of the world and knew that I was part of it.

Dragongate Genesis

Snowberry bushes grow on the slopes of the rocky knoll behind our house. Common as dust, nondescript green during the summer, in winter they are bare sticks covered in white berries. On cloudy wet days, thousands of white dots hover above the dark sodden ground, a kind of Milky Way that reaches as high as my belt. That starry image drifts into my mind unbidden and I welcome it with an inner smile. This trick of mind that opens the gate of perception runs like a background program playing with words, images and the associated ideas that jostle and elbow each other seeking a new life, a new amalgam.
Dragongate, emerged typically as an almost accident: typing in several possible blog titles and finding them taken, I drifted into the image of the wooden dragon I had created and placed on the lintel above my entrance gate. Success! Like the dragon himself springing to life from a piece of driftwood, the name became a presence, a daemon, that stands at the gates of perception.
The dragon is a potent symbol in western culture. Like fire itself, the dragon is both a destructive and a potentially creative entity. Pillaging and burning, guarding a treasure hoard locked up in the dark primordial earth, it is also the creature we must go through to regain the sequestered treasure that we must have if we are to constantly renew and revitalize the world. I remember the Dragon ships of the Vikings. These too were a force that gnawed at civilization, civilized thought, the accepted world view and were in the process an agent for change and renewal. I could not have thought of a better symbol for the power of the creative process if I had tried.

Observation

The Little Island
There is a little island not far from here that has always held a powerful attraction to me. Hardly more than a rock with a beacon at one end, it is in the path of all the ferry traffic travelling to and from the mainland. Its dominant sound is the crash of ferry waves, the thunder of engines and the squawk of public address systems.
In spite of all this disturbance it is a most beautiful land in miniature, like a painting of some idealized Renaissance landscape tantalizingly glimpsed in the distance behind some luxurious nude: Sandstone slopes and diminutive cliffs are topped by a grassy meadow and several rounded evergreen trees. That is the fascination with islands, there is a satisfying sense of completeness, of natural boundaries, that is so hard to find in our human, complex world.
In this drawing as in the Renaissance Painting, the human element, the ferry waves,fill the foreground while the Island fades in the near distance, already at the fringes of human interest. How many among the thousands of ferry passengers each day who rise to depart at the prompting of the loudspeaker, will pause to spare a glance at that perfect beauty they are passing by?

In the wake of Kon-Tiki

The bookmobile was my introduction to a wider world. Regularly it parked at the end of our rural road on the outskirts of Victoria, and I and my parents stepped up into the travelling library. My father’s choices were always travel books, and so, after I had read all my children’s adventure books, I read my way through all his books too. They were an introduction to lands and peoples, and they have shaped the direction of my life.
Later in university, where I studied anthropology and geography, it was the memory of travellers’ tales that flashed the light of human emotion over the scientific facts. To know the mechanics of monsoon rains, for example, and how they influenced human societies, was one thing; to have experienced those rains through the words of a hundred writers added another vital layer of understanding.
One of those books, Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl, has continued to influence my life. It combined all my favourite elements: the grand adventure of building a raft and sailing to Polynesia, mysterious ancient societies, trade winds, coral reefs and the great ocean itself. Here was the stuff of real life. Here, too, were attitudes towards living that I absorbed unconsciously. The crew of the raft had recently emerged from active duty in World War II. Faced with the blank void of peace, they leapt at the chance to put to use their hard-won skills and camaraderie. Here were people who didn’t just dream of travel, they carefully built a structure under their dream and sailed away.
For years the pull of that book was so strong that eventually my wife, daughter and I sailed our own wooden schooner dream boat down through Polynesia. On the month-long three thousand mile passage from Mexico, we experienced our own chapter-by-chapter opening to the ocean. Like Heyerdahl’s crew, we felt the apprehension of leaving land far behind and struggled to adjust to a solitary life in an alien world. As the massive squall clouds enveloped us, as the wind and waves became our more familiar companions, we slowly became at home in the seascape. The cycles of the moon became our timepiece during our long night watches, and in the dark before moonrise we felt ourselves to be skimming along in space, suspended between the bright stars above and the flashes of phosphorescence in the dark sea below us. As if teetering on a cliff edge, we felt we might fall into the universe. Then the wind on our cheek and the snort of dolphins racing beside us caught us back to a safer image of our ship sliding over the curved shoulder of a watery world, eased on by the breath of a warm wind in our gaff sails. In the wake of one seminal book we now experienced in our own life what we had only read about before.
Eventually the southeast trade winds blew us down to the Tuamotu Islands. New landfalls are always exciting, but this was a special place, because here was where Heyerdahl and his crew had come to the sudden end of their raft voyage. I scrambled up the ratlines on the foremast to guide us through a narrow, turbulent passage into the atoll’s calm lagoon where we spent a week at anchor in the lee of a palm-covered coral island, swimming among the reefs and walking on the motu we had dubbed ‘Kon-Tiki Island". We relaxed for the first time in months out of the roll of the Pacific swells. When we walked on the ocean side of our little island, and saw the surf where the flat coral reef dropped suddenly away, I recalled the final moments of the Kon-Tiki raft voyage as they drifted helplessly and smashed again and again on the steep cliff of coral. The mast collapsed, men clung to ropes amid the breakers, and finally the big balsa logs were bunted up on to the reef. I imagined them as they faced this dramatic voyage’s end with a quick evaluation of the situation, a plan, and an organized sequence of actions that brought them safely through the surf and to the island on the reef. They salvaged what they could, set up camp, painstaking dried out and repaired their short-wave radio and sent a message home to say they were safe. In my mind’s eye I watched them very carefully. There were such essential lessons to learn here for our own life. When fate dealt us a tough card, we too would need these same attitudes and skills to win through to more life and more adventures.
At anchor beside us in the lagoon was another Canadian family yacht. We rowed across to trade some of the books we had read during the voyage. We passed our package of books up to our friends and climbed aboard. Soon we were deep in our swapping discussions.
"You haven’t read Harry Potter?" exclaimed the little girls on the boat. "Oh, that’s terrible! But it’s only a lend, this time - don’t forget. We want them back!"
It was such a long way, and yet not far at all, from that life-changing bookmobile of my childhood.

THe voice of the world

With winter rains, our stream is flowing again after it`s long summer`s silence. Even when the wind roars through the trees at night I can hear the stream`s undertone. On a misty morning I walk downhill beside it, listening more than looking. It is a long thread of music ;the high trill of water flowing over gravel, the plunging deeper tone of a waterfall into a pond, the sibilant sound of little rapids. All changing and blending as I walk along. Other grace notes wind in and out: the breath of air in the forest canopy, eagle and raven calls, the neighbours sheep, even the chainsaw across the valley ,the floatplane in the distance and my own footsteps, my clothes scraping against the salal undergrowth. Such a simple thing. So beautifully real. The voice of the world.

"People say that what we`re all seeking is a meaning for life....I think that what we`re really seeking is an experience of being alive ,so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive." Joseph Campbell.

Landfall

With the dawn comes a calmer sea and a welcome landfall.It has been a passage filled with more than it`s fair share of heavy squalls and cross grained waves.The chart shows that once through that pass between the islands up ahead we will find a safe harbour.We look forward to the reprieve of course,we yearn for it,but it`s the anticipation of approaching a new land that really excites us.We have become hooked on the adrenaline of these passages and the anticipation of new landfalls.A little closer,the harbour more certain,and we will feel a touch of diffidence:end of the voyage let down.The discipline of the journey,the camaraderie of shared danger will soon be exchanged for the more complex and yet diluted world of shore side life.Soon though, the journey will call to us again and launch us into another thousand miles,a week or two,of blue water sailing and another landfall all the more sweet for being so hard won.

First Winter storm

The first winter storm woke us in the predawn darkness.Flying bits of trees peppered our metal roof.The house flinched at the stronger gusts.Over the slashing sound of the rain was the dominant of wind in a thousand thousand branches.A greenish flash of light,and our electrical power was gone:lost to fallen trees on power lines.We stoked the woodfire with small dry pieces of wood to get a hot fire to boil water,made tea and porridge by candlelight.

Now in full daylight the wind has dropped and I walk outside to check for damage.But what`s that.?Down where the stream enters the forest stands a shaggy sheep looking up at me.Wooly.I hav`nt seen her since I left her barely able to stand two weeks ago.What a time she must have had last night.

Wellness.

On one of our westcoast islands,hidden in the forest, is an ancient Indian well.While many of these beautiful islands are now draped with roads,powerlines,fields and villages,there are still other older lines of power growing and blossoming with their roots in deeper soil.This well is still visited by the first peoples of this land,it`s water carried up and down the coast as a valued spiritual substance.Holy wells have a long tradition in cultures around the world and yet the whole idea is hard to grasp while we are immersed in our own branch of modern daily reality.Yet surely we are the poorer for it when we loose the thinking tools associated with the concept of a holy well.The depth of our understanding shallows up to high and dry at low tide.How full the tide must be in the lives of people who can drink from the flow of meaning welling freely up out of the earth and into the light of daily life. Here is an ink painting I`ve called "The Indian Well."A canoe is pulled up on beach logs safely above the high tide lapping on the shore.A moonlit island landscape folds in shadow the path to the well.Go ahead! You too can beach your canoe and follow the path to the Indian well.

Wild food!

Our schooner is a tiny white dot in the blue tropic island bay far below.High above me the sharp volcanic ridge blocks most of the gusty trade wind. I clamber among the swaying branches of a wild mango tree picking precious fruit and dropping them one by one to my wife Heather braced on the steep trail below.After a months voyage from Mexico to the Marquesas Islands in Polynesia we are starved for fresh food.Soon we have our packs full and scramble back through the warm humid air to the beach.A quick launch through the gentle surf and we row through a gap in the coral reef and out to our anchored schooner.We grin to each other. Yesterday we bottled the tuna that our daughter caught as we neared this bay and today we will bottle the extra mangos. Tucked away beneath the floor boards all this wild food will help feed us as we sail on across the South Pacific to Australia. What an elemental satisfaction there is in this nomadic sailing life!

Begin it now....

Whatever you can do or dream you can,begin it.

Boldness has genius,power and magic in it.

Begin it now.

Goethe.

We found this quote on a memorial to a Canadian climber who died on K2.(his favorite quote).Having bought and rebuilt our big wooden schooner we sailed north along the inside passage in preparation for our big Pacific voyage.The enormity of this next step into ocean voyaging was weighing on our minds.When we found these lines on Jedediah Island they were an affirmation of our plans and an encouragement not to give up our dream.We wrote it into the first page of our ships log where we would reread it regularly.