Tag Archives: Atlantic Ocean

The Little Boy And The Big Canoe: A Memory

[Not my brothers canoe. But you get the point. Source: Google Search]

Canoes were always a part of my boyhood. Our family was definitely zero-octane. It’s all very logical given the fact that our property at 420 Front St., Owego, NY, my childhood home, happened to have the Susquehanna River in our backyard. And, we used the river often. My memories and adventures on those waters often give me solace when I leaf through my Book of Youth. One of our favorite afternoon activities was to collect a few empty mayonnaise jars, a few empty bottles of Coke and perhaps even a tomato sauce jar, put them in the canoe and head up-river toward Hiawatha Island. We were armed with our trusty Daisy BB guns. After our paddle to the island we would slowly make our way back home. We’d toss the bottles into the river and shoot at them until they shattered and sank to the silty river bottom. The shattered glass is still there sixty-some years later. This lasted until my brother Dan, bought a pellet gun that would blow the jars and bottles to shards with one shot. Who would want to compete with that?

None of this would have happened if my older brother, Chris didn’t obtain and restore a large Old Town canoe. Most average canoes are 16′ long. This was a 19′ long craft. It reminded me of an Indian war canoe or something you’d find at a YMCA summer camp in the Catskills. Somewhere in my photo boxes I have a picture of Chris working on the bow of his canoe. I cannot find this photo so the downloaded featured picture is the best I could find. You get the idea.

I recall an afternoon paddle. It was getting late and I was a tired boy. The boat was large enough for me to lie down with my head beneath the bow seat. There was a tarp. I pulled it over my head and put my ear to the floor board. I listened to the faint flow and gurgle of the water that was an inch from my cheek. I thought of the broken bottles sitting in the mud below me. The BB itself would be long gone in the future. Not so with the glass.

I lifted the tarp and saw the dark outlines of Cemetery Hill and the trees along the river bank. I knew we were close to home.

As we paddled slowly toward our property I thought of the river. I was aware of my geography so that if we left all things alone, we’d drift downstream for days into the mighty Chesapeake Bay…beyond that…the Atlantic Ocean. All the history and importance of the Susquehanna watershed began at the mouth of a moderate sized lake in central New York State, Otsego Lake in Cooperstown.

But we didn’t get to the Bay. We got home in the dark and I was left with only a memory of my evening on the floor of a large canoe.

So, on a recent trip to Owego I went over to the Hickories Park. None of the stores, hotels or the Hiawatha Bridge existed back in the day of that trip. I stand and look out over the choppy waters and think of the glass shards still resting on the river bottom. A great deal of water has flowed past the Hickories where I stood.

It’s all a memory now. Once the water passes me it’s off to the great ocean. It’s a little like life. It flows past and to really understand it and love it, one has to lie still and listen to the sound of flowing water.

Journey’s End

Pick a window…any window.  There’s nothing to see, only white.  We entered a fog bank.  Fog as thick as whole milk.  We’re sailing due west, nearing Long Island.

Visibility from our deck window is about ten feet.

The end of our three-month journey is about to end.  Nothing left, except to get through customs and get a taxi and get to our hotel.

Written on board the Queen Mary 2 at 7 pm on April 20.

 

–The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.

–Jacques Yves Cousteau

–Travelling shouldn’t be just a tour, it should be a tale.

–Amit Kalantri

–True wealth is…Places you go…People you meet…stories you tell.  Thank you for traveling to see us.  For being such wonderful people we meet…and for sharing and being in our stories.  Our paths will cross again soon.

–Tim Ovendon

 

[All photos are mine.]

 

I’m Not Alone On A Wide Wide Sea

[NOTE TO READERS: I’M REPOSTING THIS BLOG ON MONDAY, JULY 2. IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION THAT MANY OF MY FB FRIENDS DID NOT GET THIS WHEN I FIRST PUBLISHED IT ON JUNE 27. I’VE MADE A FEW CHANGES. SOME PHOTOS ARE OUT OF THE PROPER TIME SEQUENCE.]

 

Sometime in the 1980’s, I came to the conclusion that I was getting older as each year passed. I projected that simple logic into the future and realized that there was, essentially nothing I could do about it.

So I read a book. It was the story of a man, Joshua Slocum, who sailed across the Atlantic alone. When I closed that book, I knew that was something I would do one day. A solo crossing.

A few days later, I was forty years older. Yes, I did get certified to sail a deep keel 26′ boat while Mariam and I spent two months in Florida a few years ago. I was given a log book where I was to keep track of my hours sailing.

There are no entries since we left Florida. I have not sailed since then. I must say that of all the things I ever accomplished, sailing was the one thing that gave me the most pleasure.

Well, maybe I’ll make an attempt when I grow up.

When this trip became a reality, part of my dream became fulfilled. The one part of my dream that was missing, was my being alone.

We departed Southampton about 5:15pm on Sunday, June 24. Before the boat left the dock, we had our first “drill” at 4.30. We assembled in our assigned area and actually put on our life vests. We were even allowed to test the little yellow whistles.

Sunset

[The sunset off the coast of Devon and Cornwall]

I am told that there are about 2,700 passengers aboard. The staff numbers 1,200. That gives a total of 3,900 people on this boat…the Queen Mary 2. According to the captain, there are people of 33 nationalities aboard. I guess they included Mariam and I, even though most of the people we meet in the bars and restaurants are either Canadian, Australian or from New Zealand.

I have made an educated guess that the average age of the total passenger population is 70.6 years.

NAV TV.jpg

[Constant information in our stateroom]

Britannia Restaurant.jpg

[The Britannia Restaurant, our assigned dinner venue]

Tonight is our second Black Tie dinner (Gala Attire). The only thing I get to keep from this rental is the bow tie.

[No comment necessary.]

The WiFi is spotty and very slow and I’ll be grateful if this blog post gets to you, my readers, before we dock in New York City on July 1. I began writing this on Sunday, the day we left Southampton. It’s now Wednesday afternoon.

Sunday morning we will be docking in Red Hook, Brooklyn. We will get the chance to see the Statue of Liberty as we enter New York Harbor.

Just like my ancestors from Ireland and Mariam’s from Asia Minor did, decades and decades ago.

[It’s hard not to tear-up when this comes into view..just as the sun was rising.]

 

 

 

Donkey Oatie, The Atlantic Ocean and More: A True Story

[Pam.  Photo: Patrick Egan]

Every so often I run across someone with a story to tell.  Often, the encounter is in a pub in New York City, Yuma, Arizona, Juneau, Alaska or someplace in between.  For example:
  • About twenty-five years ago I met a guy who claimed he had parachuted off one of the Twin Towers of the WTC.  He said he was promptly arrested.  I didn’t buy into the story at the time.  Maybe he did…maybe not…guys say a lot of stuff in bars.
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  • A few weeks ago I met a musician in an Irish pub on Amsterdam Avenue.  He said he knew Bob Dylan quite well.  He said that Dylan called him one day about ten years ago and complained to my new friend about his (my friend’s) recording of One More Cup of Coffee.  The phone call ended with Dylan hanging up on my friend.  I don’t doubt the truth of this story.  They guy seemed genuine and quite sincere.
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Then, a few nights ago, at our home on Rainbow Lake, NY, we had our friends Pam and Hans over for some wine and cheese.  (This was the couple who sold us the R-Pod that I blogged so much about during two cross-country trips). We sat in our screened in porch and talked.  I told them of my long time dream to hike the Northville-Lake Placid Trail, or the Pacific Crest Trail (I’ve never really had much interest in the Appalachian Trail).  Then Pam began a story that made me pull my chair closer to her.  I grabbed a notebook and a pen.  I took notes about her adventure.  I paid attention this time.  It was a story worth hearing–and it was a story I had to write…
Pam was twenty-something in the early 1970’s when her father passed away.  Her dad was the rock, the foundation of her family.  Her parents had met and married during WWII.  He was apparently a man of big dreams and those dreams brimmed with adventure and travel.  He dreamt of hiking the Appalachian Trail–he considered walking across America, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  When he died, his dreams died with him.

The bond between Pam’s mother and father was sublime and solid.  So it was no great surprise that his death created a void in the world of Pam’s mom.  She went into a deep depression and this darkness alarmed the family.

. . .

One New Year’s Eve, Pam and her two brothers sat at the dining room table pouring over their father’s maps and articles, thinking of his unfulfilled travel dreams.  The siblings sat and pondered about what they could do to honor their dad’s memory and perhaps to bring their mother back into the light.  That night a plan was made.  Why not take their mom on a journey–something that would approximate the cross-country hike?

But, could their mother, now in her 60’s carry a full backpack on a lengthy hike?  It seemed unlikely, so another decision was made.  They would use a donkey to carry some of the load!  The Sicilian donkey was purchased from a farm in Massachusetts.  One of the siblings came up with the name Donkey Oatie.  It seemed to fit.
“Let’s start at Harriman State Park in New York State and head west.” I could hear the brother say.  “We’ll see how far we get and when feel we’ve had enough, we’ll end our trip”.
The family looked at each other and must have been thinking the same thought: “An impossible journey…it’s 840 miles of walking!”  But the planning went forward, nonetheless.
They mapped out a trip through New Jersey and Pennsylvania using State Parks as campgrounds.  When they reached the Keystone State, they ran into a problem.  NO PETS ALLOWED in many of the parks and a donkey was classified as a pet (?).  So they took to the back roads and soon found that this “very private trip became a very public one”.  A family friend was an AP photographer and he began phoning newspapers and Fire Departments along the route.  It wasn’t long before the travelers were being greeted by small crowds in small towns and villages.
But, it was on a lawn in a small Pennsylvania town where the story takes a special turn.
They were invited by a woman to have lunch on a lawn.  This stranger, this woman brought her mother out of the house to join everyone for lunch.  The mother had her own story to tell.  Sadly, the mother had terminal cancer.  She had also lost her husband.  Pam’s mother and this woman spoke about dreaming of destinations.  It was a widow to widow conversation.  The ill woman said that her life-long dream was to see the ocean..but something always came up and the trip never took place.  The daughter sat nearby and listened to the talk of the unfulfilled dreams of two women–who had both lost their husbands.  The ill woman told Pam’s mother how much she admired her efforts to fulfill her dreams and that of her late husband.  Pam’s mother told the woman that the sea wasn’t so far away.

The daughter sat and listened.  Several weeks later she did indeed make the trip with her mother, who finally got to look out over the sea.
The woman died two weeks after the trip.
Her daughter wrote later and told the family that she would always be grateful for the advice of Pam’s mother.  She said in the letter that those two weeks gave her that precious time to bond in that final way and to say good-bye to her mother.
Since that evening on our porch, I’ve thought about my own dreams of making a journey..but my plans seemed lame and insignificant when compared to the story I had been told.
And, besides, how could I ever make such a difference in the lives of two strangers from a simple lunch on a lawn in Pennsylvania?
The answer came to me during a sleepless night.  You really can’t plan for such outcomes–they somehow seek you out and fall into your lap.  The important thing is that you take that first step on the journey that only you can begin.

And, why are all such journeys of such importance?  Why was the terminally ill mother and her daughter’s trip to the Atlantic of such importance?  Why did Pam’s trip with her mother..attempting to honor the father’s fascination with journeys..make such an impression with a stranger on a lawn in a small Pennsylvania town?  And why did the story touch me so much?

It’s all been said so well in a cliché, an old saying, a common remark made in many situations..You just don’t know how long you have on this earth..every moment is precious..and can never be regained. 

Every Grain Of Sand

“There lived a singer in France of old

By the tideless dolorous midland sea.

In a land of sand and ruin and gold

There shone one woman and none but she.”

–Algernon Swinburne

“I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea

Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me.

I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man

Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.”

–Bob Dylan “Every Grain of Sand”

HandOfSand

Once upon a time–it seems like long ages ago–I taught in an independent school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  My job was to introduce wealthy kids to the amazing world of science.  It wasn’t a hard job.  If you lit a candle, the 5th grade boys would “ooh and ahh”, so much so that I would tell them to get out more often and see a show once in a while.

In the back of my classroom, in an oak cabinet with a glass door, I had a row of small bottles with black caps.  Each container had a label.  I think I had about twenty.  The bottles were half the size of a typical test tube.  This was my collection of sand.  Yes, I collected sand.  It makes more sense than a ball of string, rubber bands or empty beer cans from brewers that no longer exist.  I had an advantage that most sand collectors would envy.  Most of my students went to the warm places during the holiday vacations.  Some went skiing in the Alps or Aspen, but it’s hard to collect snow.  I would give my south-bound students a zip-lock bag and ask them to bring me some sand from wherever they went.  I had black sand from Hawaii, pink sand from Bermuda–I had sand from the shores of the Dead Sea and sand from Ipanema Beach in Rio.

Needless to say my sand collection was quite impressive–if you’re impressed by such things.

I think sand is as beautiful and thought-provoking to look upon as a crystal of Rhodochrosite, Halite, Calcite, Serpentine and even Garnet.  Notice I didn’t say Diamond.  I do have some sense of value.

Sand is the stuff of poets and philosophers.

“To see the world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower.  Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.”

–William Blake

These poets and philosophers have a fair grasp of the sublime nature of sand, as a physical substance that you can hold, and as a metaphor for human existence.

The ancient hour-glass is impossible to look at without thinking of the ticking of life’s clock.  How many poets have reminded us of this?  How many images are there of The Grim Reaper who carries a scythe and an hour-glass?  The message is simple, when your final grain of sand had fallen through the narrow glass, the flow of time needs to stop for you.

Hourglass

I am in Florida.  Sand is what keeps this state from sinking into a chasm between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.  [That isn’t quite the entire scientific story, but I have time restraints.]

We saw the small sign indicating a beach.  Turning right off the main road, we arrived at a tiny parking lot.  Even with sunglasses, the sun reflected from the white sand with a glaring intensity, it made you squint, it made your eyes water and it made you want to run naked along the narrow beach while singing an aria from Puccini.

That probably would have resulted in an arrest and a fine that I had no wish to pay.

Some say that if you see one beach, you see them all.  There is some truth in that.  The elements of sand, or pebbles, or  shells, the washing of the waves, the palm trees, the pine trees, or the coconut trees are present along many beaches.  Some, like those in Maine, add a rocky aspect to the mix.  But the beach I stood on just outside Fort Myers, in Florida, was almost pure white.  It made me blink.  It made me reach for my tube of SPF 45.  The sun’s intensity was turning my forearms brown as I stood and watched.

This was the Florida I came to see.  This was just one of the beaches I intended to visit.

And, beaches never fail to set my mind to wandering and wondering and thinking, about life, death, endless motion and the ultimate victory of the sea over the land.

Beach1

Yes, sand is one of the most powerful metaphors for life and change.  I’m hard pressed to think of any natural substance, so common, so varied and so beautiful that speaks to so many souls and poets and painters, about the transitory life we lead.

Every grain of sand, whether its common quartz, feldspar, weathered basalt or bits of sea shells, owns its own particular intricate shape and luster.

It’s just like what’s been said of the individuality of snowflakes.  But, snow is not on my mind these days.

Sand-Grains-quartz-Hyams-Beach-Jervis-Bay-Australia

Talent Night at the County Fair: July, 2014

FairSinger

An I-beam blocked our view from our first choice of seats.  We went back down and back up.  Great view!  A mud horse track separated the half-filled grandstand from the stage.  The stage was named for the Waste Removal Company that takes the trash from most of the homes of Clinton Co., NY.

It had rained earlier in the afternoon, but the sky was clearing nicely.  The west wind began to turn slightly chilly…enough to force me to dig for my fleece vest.  A fleece vest!?  In mid-July?  This was the North Country.  On the wall of the backstage were billboards from Pepsi and Budweiser.  Beyond the stage I could see the Green Mountains of Vermont.  In between, unseen, was Lake Champlain.

On stage the dozen contestants sat on folding chairs.  I could barely make them out in the dim lighting.  I could see a guitar act was in my future, though.  With any luck, maybe a Dylan song.  I squinted to see the young woman holding the guitar between her knees.  Nope.  Even her parents are too young to know who Dylan is.

The two emcees were ‘personalities’ from the local TV station.  One was the news anchor and the other was the weekend weatherman.  I wondered how much he made to tell us that it was cold, is cold and will be cold until Saturday afternoon…when it will be a little less cold.

First up was the 12-year-old and under group.  Six girls.  The backup music was provided by two guys at a sound table under a brown canvas tarp mid-way across the horse track.  A rainbow appeared above the stage.

I got as comfortable as I could and began to listen to these young girls sing (one did an Irish Step Dance).  Then they were followed by the adults.

I let the music fill the old wooden stands.  I heard the voices sing songs I mostly didn’t know.  I listened to the occasional lines:

“Let it be…”

“Before he cheats…”

“Sway with me…”

“Rain blowing in your face…”

“Surround me when the night gets cold…”

The voices were tentative, shy, strong, weak, off-key, quiet and loud.  But like all music, good and not so good, it transported me.  I left my body on the bench and my mind began to soar.

I soared over the rows of fresh-cut hay of the field beyond the horse track, up and over Plattsburgh, across Lake Champlain, over the Green Mountains, passed the rainbow that had appeared in the clouds overhead, toward New Hampshire, Boston and the Atlantic Ocean.  I was vaguely aware of the shy voices of the little girls, the strong “give-me-your-best-shot” confidence of the adult women, the strong baritones of the men, the gentle folk song on the guitar.

This was young untested talent.  Virgin talent.  Bold talent.  And some of it was nearly free of talent…but it came from twelve people who had the stuffing to get up in front of their friends and family and neighbors and try.  They tried with their hearts because they wanted someone, anyone to listen to what they felt they had.  This was their moment in the blue lights.  This was their chance to prove to themselves that whatever it is they want, they were going to try to get it.

The first little girl who sang, came in last.  She walked down the ramp of the stage and slowly across the dirt horse track…the widest horse track she had walked across in her eight or nine years on earth.

She was wiping her cheeks.  My heart broke.

“Please God,” I said to myself. “Don’t let her think she failed, is a failure, will be a failure…is not now or ever going to be good enough.”

She’s lying in her bed now, thinking about how she came in last.  What will she do in the morning?

“Please God, give her the strength to get out of bed and begin singing again.”

Me?  I’m sitting at my laptop trying to describe to you how she sent me out over the Ocean.

I think her creative energy was bound up with my fate.  If she had faltered in mid-song…turned around and walked away…I would have fallen into the sea.

Fair1

FairLights

Carny

The Carny