Traveler, the path is your footprints and nothing more; traveler, there is no path but what you make by walking. Your footsteps create the path, and looking back you see the track where you won’t pass again. Traveler, there is no path, but only wakes on the sea.
— “CANTARES” BY ANTONIO MACHADO, 1929
NO ENTRY FOR SEPTEMBER 1–2, 2001
SEPTEMBER 3, 2001
NIGHT: 41°F. These past days have been cloudy and raining on and off. The wind not fierce, but strong enough to raise whitecaps. My shoulders seem to be slowly improving. Tonight I took ibuprofen for the first time in days. I haven’t gone to Staines for a while, but if the weather is decent tomorrow, I might head over to fish in the lee of the cliffs. I still have one meal of fish, and the ice in the cooler should last another week.
I’m considering where I might plant a garden in the sun and out of the wind. The solar panels are keeping up with my electricity use, and I hope I won’t need the wind generator again. If I’d known how noisy it would be, I’d have bought two more solar panels instead.
I’ve rigged a plastic shelter to stretch over the boat in case I go exploring for more than a day and can’t find a place to camp on land. I’ve also built a spray shield on the boat that I hope will keep me dry in rough water. A few days ago I annotated the marine chart with the longitude and latitude of various prominent points along the route to the lake with the glacier so I’ll be able to track my position on the map using GPS. I’ve been watching the barometer more closely, too, but can still make no sense of the relationship between it and the weather.
Still no word from Alejandra, and I’m considering not checking email anymore. German will get here when he does. I’m actually sort of glad he hasn’t shown up yet. It’s allowed me to realize I can make do with what I have and don’t really need all the stuff I’ve asked Patti to buy and send.
I’ve been spending more time sitting in the rain and wind at the point. Cat usually comes with me. Today I snuck away and went to sit alone in the woods. I found a lovely nook down near the point. Delicate ferns, mosses, and lichen. It’s much quieter in there, very wet, and very green. Not a square inch of bare earth.
Yesterday was full moon and I sweat. Sweating is important to me, but it’s so much work that I’m glad I don’t need to do it again for a month. I gave thanks for my life and again asked for the courage and steadiness to keep trying to accomplish whatever it is I came here to do. I can’t do it on my own, or even figure out why I came.
Perhaps the darkness I fear so much is not evil, but loss of control. Ego hanging on for dear life, even though its need for control is killing me. Moments of surrender come and go, and perhaps one of the lessons I’m learning is that I can’t depend on peak experiences to change my way of being. It’s a long process, a lot of work, and it may come to naught.
It’s getting easier to tell the butter-belly ducks apart. I don’t know if my eyes have become sharper or if the male’s color is changing with the coming of mating season. They came to drink on the beach today, and after they went back to the water the immature eagle landed to score one of the fish heads I’ve been tossing down there. The butter-bellies didn’t like that at all. They came charging back up the beach and chased the eagle away. Poor eagles, no one wants them around. They must scavenge eggs or hunt the chicks.
A new pair of beautiful birds (Ashy-headed Goose) arrived recently: rusty brown breast, filigreed black-and-white belly and sides, light grey head and neck, some white on the wings.
The butter-bellies do their territorial defense routine several times a day. Both pairs know where the boundary is, so why not stop wasting time and energy defending it? Because that’s not the way the world works. I don’t believe science will ever really explain how the world is because the rational mind is incapable of doing so. Yet in my personal life I become furious when the world doesn’t behave in a rational way — which, of course, isn’t very rational.
SEPTEMBER 4, 2001
NIGHT: I just heard a commotion of flailing wings outside. The butter-bellies do this now and again, especially at night. Maybe the otter is out there. How do they ever sleep when they must always be on the lookout? I just noticed how odd it is to be typing on the laptop and pause to add wood to the fire. What a mix of technologies.
I went to Staines today and the spray/wind shield worked perfectly. I can just see over it and only my face gets wet. Fishing was poor. I guess it can’t be good every day, but why not? Coming back, I got hit by a wave of restlessness. I wanted to go somewhere or do something, but I couldn’t think of anyplace I want to go or anything I want to do. Not even make love. Just feeling restless. I might not actually want to go to the glacier, but I do feel called to go as part of the process of being here. My shoulders and back are very sore from pulling the anchor rock up two hundred feet and dragging the boat up the beach. No wonder I like to catch a bunch of fish when I go.
Late last night after writing, I went out to the rock. I didn’t really want to, but something urged me on. Soft mystic moonlight fell on a calm sea and snowy Staines cliffs. I sat for a while — thoughts drifting in and out — calling my mind back over and over to my breath and to the sounds around me. Then one of those wandering thoughts snagged my attention.
I’ve been trying to feel part of the community of Life, but in that moment I remembered that I, myself, am already a community comprised of bacteria, viruses, fungi, mites, and who knows what else. And according to the biologist Lynn Margulis, even each eukaryote cell in my body is a symbiotic community, made up of organelles that at one time were independent prokaryote cells.
In the past, the thought of having all these critters living on, in, and with me — who are me — has been kind of creepy, but last night I was carried softly and gently into the flow of the world. Sacred indeed is everything. And me, sacred, too. Slowly I’m relaxing and healing. Not the earthshaking transformation I’d expected, but the ebb and flow of solitude carrying me along.
I remembered sitting in the Peruvian desert years ago beside a mummy dug up by grave robbers. I’d read about the Buddhist practice of going to the charnel house to meditate on impermanence, and through my Christian goggles had interpreted that practice as a penance to face the hard fact of death. But with the mummy I felt a quiet sense of brotherhood and spaciousness; I, too, would go where he had gone, and my immediate concerns were not as all-consuming as I usually experience them to be.
There was the same unexpected freedom last night when I realized that this me is not really just me. A sense of being woven into the world. In the past I’ve sensed the world as a unified field of sorts. Last night I sensed Life as myriad individual organisms, each maintaining its own inner coherence and all of us organized into a hierarchical web. I sensed myself as belonging to a world of individual beings, but there was no feeling of fragmentation; we were all still one flowing whole, too.
Lately I’m less concerned with trying to figure out how other people can easily find their way to a shift of consciousness. No theory or system can make it happen faster or easier. Like a child growing up, our spiritual lives need to be lived one day at a time.
In spite of these openings to Spirit, my behavior toward Cat is not improving. He got in the middle of my work today and I put him aside. He came back and I forcibly tossed him to the ground. No patience or compassion; just “Get the fuck out of my way while I’m trying to work.” I don’t know how to change this behavior. I’m aware of what I’m doing, and I do it anyway.
SEPTEMBER 5, 2001
NIGHT: First blue sky in a week, and I woke to morning sun slanting in through the window. Joy. I didn’t expect it back at the cabin this soon. I hung the wash out to finish drying, and then Cat and I sat lizardlike on the rock. Ah me, what a spring day: slight breeze, 50 degrees, no bugs. I wanted to stay in the sun, but worked on the boat instead, so tomorrow I’ll be ready to go away for a few days if the weather holds. At the moment it doesn’t look too good: barometer falling and sky clouding over.
In one of the Gaia essays, Francisco Varela writes that through their behavior, animals allow us to see the world they have created for themselves. The butter-belly diving ducks are a good example. Their behavior both creates and points to the boundary line that stretches across the shifting sea between their territories. Without them to show me, I couldn’t perceive it.
It’s interesting that when a question arises in my mind I often see the answer soon after. Today I saw the female butter-belly sleep. She settled into a patch of kelp to keep from drifting, tucked her head under her wing, and dozed off. The male was feeding close by and seemed to keep watch.
SEPTEMBER 6, 2001
LATE NIGHT: My intuition last night about the weather was correct. I set the alarm for 7 AM. By 8 it was cloudy, a light breeze had sprung up, and small wavelets were washing the shore. I figured the channel might get rough, but my fish and wood supply need replenishing, so I headed to Staines anyway.
The wind was blowing way too hard over there to fish, and the waves breaking on the beach were big enough that loading wood would have been a hassle. I bagged it. Whoa! I actually let it go and started home without even trying to fish or cut wood. Just gave up.
Instead of coming straight home, I stayed out in the channel for a couple of hours to practice handling the boat in rough water. The motor started to miss so badly I thought I might not make it back. I need to run the motor in calm water to see if it misses even when water is not splashing up around it. I don’t think I’ll go far until German gets here with the parts whenever that might be. I’m definitely not going anywhere unless the day is flat calm.
According to the marine chart, the inlet I want to explore is about twenty miles northeast of here where a river runs from a small lake into the sea. A second lake, into which a glacier seems to slide, lies a short distance up a second river. On the topographic map, each river appears to be less than a quarter of a mile long and to gain very little altitude, so depending on how rough the country is I might be able to hike to the upper lake carrying the deflated kayak. If I can’t reach the glacier eighty miles north of here, perhaps I can make it to this smaller closer one.
Even if I intend to go for only one night, it will take hours to prepare the gear, since I might have to wait out a storm before I can make it back. I’ll leave Cat here with plenty of food. I imagine he ’ll hate being alone, but I worry that when I land somewhere he might not come back into the boat when it’s time to move on.
SEPTEMBER 7, 2001
LATE NIGHT: 40°F. Cloudy with scattered stars. Only a light breeze and the sea is fairly calm. Last night was luxurious. I built a fire early and took a nap; got up, ate, read for a while, and took another nap; got up, read, and took a third nap; got up, ate, read, and watched dawn come through the window into the warm cabin. Each time I woke from a nap the fire had burnt to coals but started easily again. I spent a while at the point, and then came back to bed. I covered the sleeping pad with sheets, and for the first time since I’ve been here, took off my long underwear and slept naked.
Tonight is less peaceful. I’ve started reading Thoughts without a Thinker by Mark Epstein, a Freudian psychiatrist and Buddhist meditator. The book relates the two practices to each other, which is interesting and useful, but triggers all my psychological stuff again. I’m sick of rehashing the same old crap. Maybe that’s the point. When I get sick enough of it, I may finally give it up.
In two weeks it will be spring equinox. How did that happen? Just yesterday it was winter solstice! I received an email from the national parks office that said, “Only a little time remains now,” as though the main point is to be able to stay the full year. I’ve been here seven months and have five to go, so I’m just over halfway. But in one sense they’re dead on. Time will begin to fly, and there really is only a little left.
A famous Zen koan asks: “If the many return to the One, to what does the One return?” If I think that returning to the One refers to the atoms and energy of the individual returning to the common flux of the universe, I’m mistaken; atoms and energy are matter. The challenge is to sense not only matter, but also nonmaterial Emptiness.
Deep, still, pool in my mind.
Is this why
the quiet sea
beckons so?
I sit on solid rock
as wind and sea move me,
plying the clouded sky
as gull, as condor.
Late I sit
on solid rock
sunk in this deep still pool.
And the sea mirrors my reflections.
SEPTEMBER 8, 2001
LATE NIGHT: Ha! I saw the butter-bellies screw today. The one I’ve thought was the male was on top. They had sex in the water and then head-bobbed and preened for a while; he worked mostly on his wings, while she concentrated on rearranging her ruffled tail feathers. Tufts of down stuck to her bill and dangled down on both sides like a Fu Manchu mustache. What cool birds. I’m glad to have them for neighbors and hope they nest where I can watch what they do.
The close pair had several strong interactions with the far pair and chased away a single intruder. When performing the ritual territorial defense, both pairs make noise and try to look as large as possible: the females stretch their necks up and point their bills toward the sky; the males push their breasts out, rear back, and beat their wings to hold themselves high out of the water; both sexes have their tails spread. The males sometimes charge each other, but always turn away to show their white tails before actual contact. Both pairs then swim parallel to the boundary — males between their female and the other pair. When intent on mayhem with an intruder, they attack silently and sink low in the water or even dive as they go after the outsider.
I think this female will begin laying eggs soon. I suppose she’ll deposit one a day and start to brood once the whole clutch is laid. Will both of them brood the eggs in turn, or only the female? Will they guard the nest before they start to brood? If not, and if I can find the nest, I might rob an egg or two for dinner. Yum. They probably won’t mind....
Thoughts without a Thinker is clean, straightforward, and subtle. Epstein discusses the two false selves we all create: one is inflated and the other deflated — in Buddhist terms, solid existence and solid nonexistence. I can certainly feel myself flip back and forth between these states. When I’m successful in something I feel grand, and when I fail I feel like shit. This is the exact dynamic Epstein describes. Happy day, I’m normal! Whew, it’s pouring down rain.
NO ENTRY FOR SEPTEMBER 9, 2001
SEPTEMBER 10, 2001
NIGHT: 40°F. Yesterday, Sunday, was a long empty day. I awoke with that old feeling of not getting anywhere. I hear about people making progress in therapy and spiritual practice, but I’ve been at this shit for thirty-five years with little to show for it. I feel like Sisyphus, and question why I’ve wasted my life doing this when it’s clearly not going anywhere. I try to maintain emotional and cognitive space so I can see what I find hard to deal with. At one point I sank deeply into the feeling of emptiness and it opened out and transformed into love and peace. Anxiety, I think, transformed into joy. This seemed important at the time, but less so now.
Emotions — like wind and rough sea — lose their apparent ferocity when I go into them, but gain power if I hold them at bay. When I hide in the cabin, the Wind threatens; if I go out, it’s just wind. Instead of going out to transform Wind into wind yesterday, I remained inside with the anxiety. Clarity is important, too: emotions, like the sea, can swamp me if I don’t take care to remain steady and alert.
Last night I got out the charts and marked the longitude and latitude for eighteen points along the route to the far glacier — just in case. As I was working on it, the wind shifted to the southwest and smashed straight into the cabin. I took it as a sign . . . but I’m not sure of what. Was it that the wind will fuck me up if I go, or, since in spite of my anxiety the cabin and I survived with no damage, that I shouldn’t let my fear prevent me from going?
As far as I can tell, there is no way to predict the wind. Yesterday was cloudy with a moderate breeze from the northwest, as it has been for the past two weeks. Then — barometer holding steady and not especially low — the wind just slammed in. I still feel frustrated, threatened, and vulnerable, especially when considering a long boat trip.
This afternoon I was washed with a wave of grief for Mom. I cried as I acknowledged to myself how much I caused her to suffer by my inability to open up and be soft with her these past years. I tried so hard, but each time I went to visit I’d feel threatened, guard myself, and hold her away. Where did such hurt and rage come from? I have a dozen narratives to explain the family dynamic, but so what?
In my grief today, I also discovered shame. I’ve never really acknowledged how deeply ashamed of myself I am. Shame for who I am and who I am not. Especially my fear, weakness, and self-centeredness. I also must admit that I was ashamed of Mom, and I’m ashamed of myself for this, too. Feeling ashamed of someone who loves you must be one of the most hideous and damaging things you can do. I’ve done this to all the women who have loved me. Perhaps when I can’t face my own shame, I dump it on others.
Running from these feelings has led me to be suicidal in subtle ways. To stay ahead of the shame or to disprove my cowardliness, I’ve done things that have almost killed me. But even as I write that, I must admit that I love to be out on the ragged edge where things are risky.
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
NIGHT: 44°F. Calm and raining, and another day of difficult emotions. Some psychologists claim that fear is the fundamental emotion underlying anger. I don’t think so. It seems to me that anger and shame are as basic as fear, and all are inherent in having an individual self. If I step back and visualize the universe as a whole, it’s fluid and centerless. But when I experience it with my own ego-self as the center, this angle of view creates a distortion that manifests in different ways depending on circumstance: fear, anger, shame, etc.
I took the kayak to look for the diving ducks’ nest but couldn’t find it. When I got back, Cat wasn’t around, which is unusual. I called, waited, and called some more as evening came on and it started to rain. I was beginning to worry that something had happened to him when he finally came strolling in from the direction of the point. He ’d circled the island. I was very glad to see him. When he ’s around I often feel irritated and crowded, as if I’m not free to be myself, but when I think he might be gone, I feel the loss and miss him.
In Thoughts without a Thinker Epstein talks about being able to experience anxiety and excitement at the same time. I’ve often sensed that these two emotions share the same physiological arousal: when we believe we can handle an intense situation, we feel excitement; when we believe we can’t cope, anxiety.
What’s the difference between fear and anxiety? If fear is a biological response to something happening now, and anxiety a psychological response to an imagined future threat, then anxiety sucks. After all, the future exists only as certain kinds of thoughts we think in the present.
Epstein also writes that low self-esteem is endemic in our culture. This is useful to read because it sets my own experience in a broader context. We all suffer such pain, and in realizing our commonality, individual suffering is eased.
In some sense the suffering of starving, tortured, and diseased people seems unreal to me. But what does seem real is the pain of the countless people who experience themselves as failures and their lives as disappointing. I grieve for those who suffer so. This pain may be inherent to the existence of a self: in the end, we all fail because we all die.
SEPTEMBER 12, 2001
LATE NIGHT: 42°F. Grey windy day, sea on the move. After a night of dreams, I woke this morning feeling lost and confused. Then I just let it go and asked for help. Surrender brought peace, but also the disappointment that I’ll never understand the world. It felt like another kind of failure.
I attempted to reglue a loose patch on the boat without removing the floor, but it didn’t work. Maybe the pontoon material is damp and salty. I might try to rinse the area and use a heated rock to dry and warm it. Other than that, I meditated, read, and continued to struggle with fear. I’d considered not reading anymore, but instead I’ve started Wilber’s eight-hundredpage book, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, and will try to read fifty pages a day. I’m reluctant to give up reading and simply be with my own life 24/7.
Cat seems to have found playmates in the butter-belly diving ducks. He stalked them today and got very close before the male noticed him and flinched away into the water. Cat then turned his attentions to the female. She just lowered her head and hissed. He reconsidered his options and wandered away. I was sort of hoping he would jump on one of them. I doubt he could hurt them, unless he was very lucky, and the image of him clinging to a duck’s back as it ran flapping across the water struck me as pretty funny. Of course I would have had to launch the kayak to go rescue him if he hung on for very long.
This afternoon I heard a warning call and saw them swim out into the eastern channel. I couldn’t see anything until I used the binoculars to finally spot an intruder. They have amazing eyesight to recognize one of their own species so far away.
Can the formation of strong pair-bonds and territorial defense behavior be explained within some theoretical framework? Does neo-Darwinian Theory, which presupposes individual competing organisms, actually make sense? As I continue to watch them, such questions fade and I’m left with blank amazement and wonder at their bare existence.
SEPTEMBER 13, 2001
Fierce night . Rain and northwest wind roaring in the trees. I feel like a wild animal out there is trying to get to me, but as the months pass I’m becoming more confident that the cabin will hold. I’m also realizing more clearly that what I fear will come for me is already part of my mind.
I woke early to go for firewood at high tide. A light wind was already blowing, but I decided to go anyway. As I got out of bed, feeling groggy from not enough sleep, an inner voice said, “Don’t go.” How to listen to inner voices without going crazy and how to know which to believe? What is sound intuition and what only fear? When actual danger is involved — like taking a small boat into rough water — questioning whether an intuition can be trusted has more heft.
I loaded survival gear and chain saw into the boat. It started to piss down rain. I decided it was a sign to not go, but then changed my mind again. The water was very rough in the channel, and waves were breaking on the beach where I cut wood. It’s the second time I’ve come home empty-handed.
Today pretty much convinced me to give up going to the distant glacier. The motor is running rougher than it was and knocking louder. I still plan to explore the inlet twenty miles north of here and see if I can hike and paddle to the glacier there. If I don’t go to the far glacier, I imagine I’ll have the opportunity to face my fear sooner or later anyway.
For a long time I’ve been relating to myself and my parents as if my character was the result only of upbringing with no input from my own inherent nature. How strange. Given the family dynamic, I could have responded differently. If I want to attribute all my stuff to nurture, I need to do the same for them. We ’ve each done the best we could. Mom gave all she could in the face of her own fear and despair. Dad’s severe criticisms came from his own sense of inadequacy; he must have judged himself cruelly — even if not consciously.
I read fifty pages of Wilber today. One whole section seems hopelessly muddled to me, but at the end he gives a summary that makes perfect sense. So he continues to be an interesting challenge.
I wonder about new knowledge. Perspectives might be refined, and the language used to express ideas evolves, but really new ideas are rare. Thinkers have seen the world in various ways for a long time, and the scope of potential worldviews probably doesn’t change much.
SEPTEMBER 14, 2001
A lovely day, only the second in over a month. Mostly sunny, 45°F, light breeze from the southwest. I went fishing to Staines, but no bites at all. I did pick up a load of redwood, though.
After I unloaded I took the boat back out for a slow easy circuit around all four of the islands in this cluster where I live. It was relaxing to be close to home and not so worried about the motor, even though it sounded pretty unhealthy.
During the extreme low tide I walked out on the mudflat and watched buried clams squirt sparkling spouts of water, backlit by the late afternoon sun. I found a tiny sea urchin and a couple of small spiral snail shells—none of which I’d seen before. My eyes must be getting clearer.
I came in to put on warmer clothes, happened to look out the window and saw the kayak sitting untied right at the water’s edge, with night falling and the tide coming in. If I hadn’t noticed, I might have woken up tomorrow with the kayak gone — drifted away in some unknown direction. Can’t believe I did that.
It’s been a long day and I’m tired and sore. Thoughts Without a Thinker suggests focusing bare attention on pain. So I haven’t taken any ibuprofen yet. I want to see if I can relax into the pain and sink beneath the conceptual label to experience it directly as a flickering complex of strong sensation. I hope to stay with it until it dissolves on its own.
SEPTEMBER 15, 2001
NIGHT: 49°F. Cloudy, calm. I was up early to go exploring, but a breeze from the northwest already whispered in the trees. Sunrise was astonishing. Maybe I miss a lot of beautiful sunrises by sleeping late. I didn’t meditate, which changed the tone of the morning: a sweet lonely why-are-we-alive feeling.
This afternoon the close pair of diving ducks swam into their neighbor’s territory. At the boundary the male hung back, but the female swam right in and started to feed. She kept calling, and finally, apparently against his better judgment, the male followed her. They continued to feed and even climbed onto the other pair’s home-base rock. Suddenly a warning cry as the other pair rounded the corner into the basin and charged. Whoops! These guys were off the rock and underwater in a heartbeat. Once back in their own territory they resumed their normal boundary defense display. (Ah, the female ...always leading the male astray.)
This behavior was new to me. Are all animals as individual as these? If I watched them for five years, would they continue to act creatively the whole time? Maybe the belief that instinct drives most animal activity is overstated. Studies often focus on commonalities and ignore differences. But doing so can create a distorted picture and give the impression that we understand the world better than we actually do.
At the extreme low tide I took the shovel out onto the mudflat and waited until I saw a squirt. I dug but didn’t find whatever squirted. As the afternoon light softened, my mood shifted to a sort of sweet sadness. Looking around at the mountains and sea, I imagined being already gone from here and missing it terribly. Al Green singing For the Good Times has been going through my head all day.
I like Wilber’s claim that differentiation and integration are both necessary aspects of development: too much autonomy, the individual loses vital connection with the environment; too openly receptive, the individual is overwhelmed. I suspect I’m much too differentiated. The only time I feel fully integrated is alone in the wilderness. This sense of excessive independence is common in our culture, especially for men.
According to Wilber, we ’re evolving on all levels: physical, cultural, and cognitive. Humans haven’t left behind some ideal state of being and run off the rails by developing a strong differentiated ego. The emergence of the ego is a vital stage of development, but not the end of the process. The individual still needs to integrate the ego into the soul and into the embracing swirl of the universe. We haven’t gone astray, but neither have we arrived to where we ’re going.
On my way to the point yesterday I noticed a path has formed where I walk through the grass. It gave me a sense of comfort and security. Maybe what I’m doing here is laying down a path between different states of consciousness. Not coming up with an abstract theory of how to control the shift, but simply covering the ground again and again until I know the territory and have laid down a path in walking.
SEPTEMBER 16, 2001
LATE NIGHT: It’s been a tranquil day. I woke to light rain and a flat sea. Ah, quiet. On the high tide I went fishing to Staines and caught a bunch of snapper. Since my ice is gone, I sealed the fillets in a plastic container and floated it in a pool of groundwater beneath the trees. The water is 40°F and the fish should keep for at least four days. It was wonderful to slide over glassy water without being jarred by wind and chop; like leaving a rutted dirt road to roll along smooth pavement.
It drizzled most of the day and I enjoyed being out in the gentle rain. Wisps and streamers of mist wrapped themselves around the hills and drifted into the hollows. The rock walls and waterfalls were perfect and perfectly beautiful. How blessed I am to be here.
Out on the water I felt my heart softly open, and remembered that this is the feeling I have when I leave the safety of home for the unknown. I still fear the trip to the glacier, but being far from the cabin might carry me more deeply into this openness. Something in me is calling, or I wouldn’t be so concerned about whether I go or not.
While fishing, I heard the sea lions and went to visit. There are ten of them now. A dominant bull, eight smaller adults, and the calf. They were a delight to watch. I drifted to within thirty yards of them, but was leery of going closer since I don’t know how far the bull will defend his territory. They all swam back and forth along the rock in a tight pack, sometimes sort of leapfrogging over each other. They would pause, lift up to gaze at me, and then resume their swimming. It looked like play to me — like they were swimming together just for the fun of it.
Mom and calf stayed on a ledge, leaning this way and that, as if the movement gave them a better look at me. They were always touching: mostly the calf had a flipper over mom’s back. Finally, she, too, dove into the water and left the calf alone. Their ledge was four or five feet above the sea, and if the calf had gone in, I couldn’t see how it would get back up again, so I kept my distance. How nice to have them for neighbors.
NO ENTRIES FOR SEPTEMBER 17–21, 2001
SEPTEMBER 22, 2001
Spring Equinox.
Time is:
a worm
a caterpillar
a grub.
Minutes creep into days
days trudge toward the end of the week.
Then lost in the long grey sleep of our absence
a sudden startling shift.
A transformation.
Years have flown and carried us toward
the implacable moment of death.
Are you remembering to remember
to pause and notice Life living in you?
to feel
the tender autumn light
flicker across your waters?
to drift
with the clouds and mist
into the mountains and canyons
of your soul?
to float
in the ebb and flow
of joy and sorrow, love and grief
through the wide empty basin of your heart?
What a glorious first day of spring. The past five days were raw: frequent rain, no sun, and nearly constant wind. But yesterday afternoon the weather shifted to calm and clear, with only a light breeze from the southeast.
I had hoped to finish Sex, Ecology, Spirituality by now, but I’m only on page three hundred. I mostly like what Wilber writes, even though he makes the spiritual journey seem very straightforward — almost like solving an engineering problem or learning to play tennis. For me, opening my heart and mind to what is, rather than trying to control everything, remains a mysterious art.
Although I’ve been staying up until nearly dawn most nights, I decided to go to bed with the chickens last night and get an early start today. But before I knew it, it was 5 AM. I woke three hours later to a clear calm sunrise. The breeze didn’t build, and by noon I was on my way to the inlet southeast of here where I’ve wanted to go for six months.
At first I trudged along at only 8 or 9 mph since the motor started to miss when I cranked it up enough to plane. I’d like to get that fixed, but there ’s still no word from Alejandra about when German might come with the parts. Other than that the motor ran ok. Then I remembered that if I slow to a crawl and accelerate rapidly, the boat lifts up much easier. After that I was flying along at almost 14 mph in the calm areas and 11 or so in the light chop.
It feels like movement is a deep part of who I am, but once on the water today and less tightly bound, I remembered that such exploring is not the main reason I came here. On the contrary, I came to practice being still and receptive, rather than constantly active and seeking. Still, it felt great to be on the move.
Along the way I stopped at what looked like a good place to fish, where the rock wall had crumbled into the sea. Wham. Even before the bait reached bottom I had a nice snapper on. The next three times down I pulled up six fish — all of them as big as the biggest I’ve caught at Staines. Dinner secured, I motored on.
The inlet is beautiful. At the far end I fished the mouth of the small river that drains a lake I’d considered trying to reach in the kayak. No bites, but it was a treat to listen to the babble and watch the sun sparkle on moving water. I miss that here on the island. The river was much too fast and rocky to paddle up or walk with kayak in tow. The land was flat and sparsely treed, and I could, perhaps, have deflated the kayak and carried it cross-country, but I didn’t try.
Along the way I looked for possible campsites, but there were always signs that the tide floods into the heavy brush. I followed a narrow side inlet reaching south into the foothills. It was alluring in there, but at the far end — as far from anywhere as you can go — I found a bunch of plastic crap that had drifted in with the wind and tide. I cleaned it up and brought the trash home with me.
Back here, I went to visit the sea lions. Woooeee! The colony is growing fast. It started with one last fall, and I counted eighteen today. Where do they come from and how do they know there ’s a colony forming here? Do they leave and return each year? No wonder fishing is now slow over there.
A beautiful bird (Rufous-chested Dotterel) has recently arrived. Maybe eight inches tall, neutral grey back, creamy white belly with strips of white running up in front of the wings. The breast is a rich rusty brown and separated from the belly by a heavy black line. The eyes are ringed in white, and a white band circles the head just above the eyes. I saw two of the males fighting yesterday and it was just as exciting as a cockfight.
My psychological struggles have continued these past days and I’m getting pretty damned tired of them, too. I guess I’ll give it up eventually. In the meantime I’ll cook fish and rice for dinner and then go to sleep. I may sit under stars for just a little while first, though....
NO ENTRIES FOR SEPTEMBER 23–30, 2001