Evanston: Where I wish I were tonight

 

A few hours ago Steve Earley sent me the above photo of where he is anchoring tonight.  What purity.  Of light.  Of beauty.  Of SPARTINA.  Note the lack of clutter.  The organization of the lines.  As I have noted before, the man knows what he is doing.  He is a sailor.

I actually would not want to be right there compromising Steve’s solitude, but I would like the equivalent.  I need the equivalent and I expect to find it in a few weeks in the waters near Hilton Head.  I deeply miss the solace of water.

And I deeply miss being on the edge of life.

The last passage of GANNET’s circumnavigation was terribly slow and frustrating.  At the end all I wanted was for it to be over and never have to suffer such again. 

I am truly old.  I will be 79 next month.  Yet I long to do more, and if time and chance do not end me I will yet make voyages that stretch imaginations.  I am truly amazed that I have lasted this long.  It is beyond improbable.  I am designed to go out until I can’t.  It takes time to recover from hard voyages and no doubt longer as I become older, but I do.

I visited Google Arts and Culture today and found among other things “Check Out What Everyone’s Loving On Social’.  So the masses are the judges of art.  Or anything.  I think not.  This is a short lived historical aberration.

I will confess that I like praise.  I am pleased that ‘legendary’ is now routinely appended to my name. But I will not be defined by others.  Certainly not the masses.  And not even by you.

I want to be anchored as Steve is tonight with no one else and hopefully no sign of our species in sight.  

I would like to sail New Zealand’s Bay of Islands again.

I would like to round Cape Horn again.

This is the dying part of my life.  

We all know how I should die. 

Not ashore of cancer or a stroke or dementia or a virus, but at sea.  Perhaps in a force five hurricane or overwhelmed by a towering freak wave such as I have never seen or more likely simply by slipping and falling overboard.  Carol has said that is what will happen to me in mid-ocean in my 90s.  She is quite intelligent.  So, though old, I may have another decade and a little more to go.

To life and joy.