Hilton Head Island: apocalypse not; happy people; rivers and oceans

Having seen reports and images of the recent East Coast storm, several friends emailed asking what it was like here.  

Despite fearsome forecasts the storm did not happen here and we weren’t here anyway.  Gale and coastal flood warnings were issued.  The storm passed over Hilton Head Island on Sunday.  The National Weather Service Hilton Head Airport site reported only two gusts above 30 miles per hour.  All other gusts were between 20 and 30 mph/17-26 knots and the average winds were 15 mph/13 knots.  About 3”/76 mm of rain fell.  Not quite the end of the world.

The exaggerated forecast did cause me to change my plans.  I had a reservation to fly to Charlotte, North Carolina, on Sunday, to join Carol who had flown there three days earlier to spend time with her family and then ride back with her on Monday.  Expecting that the weather if anything like the forecast would close Hilton Head’s small airport, I changed my flight and flew up on Saturday.  I need not.  The two incoming and departing flights on Sunday operated on time.

Monday was sunny and cool as Carol drove us south.  We saw no signs of damage or flooding beyond a few puddles of standing water beside the road.

I had a quick flash of pleasure as we left the bridge and were on the island again, no longer a part of the main, and later enjoyed the serenity as I sipped a martini at our bedroom window and watched the setting sun turn the live oaks, Spanish moss, and Skull Creek to gold.

HAPPY PEOPLE is a documentary by Dimitri Vasyukov and narrated by Werner Herzog, one of the most original of filmmakers.  It is subtitled ‘A Year In The Taiga’.  The happy people are the independent and self-sufficient hunters/fishermen/trappers who live in an isolated Siberian village that can only be reached by helicopter or by boat during the few months the rivers are not frozen.  The men do use a few contemporary devices:  outboard motors, snow mobiles, guns; but mostly they make what they need themselves:  boats, skis, traps, huts, and catch their own food.  

Some of you have the skills to live as they do.  I do not.  I can be independent from the world for months, but only by buying what others have made or caught or grown for me.  Perhaps I could have learned those skills if I had to, but I did not.  I greatly admire these men without wishing to emulate them and I very much enjoyed the film, which is available streaming from many sources.  I watched on Amazon Prime Video.

Here is a link to more information about it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_People:_A_Year_in_the_Taiga

Of happiness, I came across an article by a Harvard professor who teaches a free course on happiness.  I confess that I was surprised to learn that there is such a course, but upon reading the article I agree with her conclusion.  Largely because of my age I was susceptible to what she calls  ‘The Arrival Fallacy’ at the conclusion of my sixth circumnavigation and in time, though I lead a very pleasant life in immediate proximity to beauty, became dissatisfied until at age 80 I made my third five year plan and created a new goal, though subject to being impossible due to age and health.  I have always kept the last line on the lines page of the main site:  Go out, going forward.  And with a goal, even if I never reach it, I am.

https://www.inthepresentsea.com/the_actual_site/lines.html

Here is a link to the article:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/17/harvard-expert-avoid-this-1-thing-for-a-real-sense-of-satisfaction.html

I am reading RIVER HORSE which came to me via BookBub about a crossing of the United States in 1995 by two men in a 22’ power boat about the size of GANNET but with a shallow draft and two 45 horsepower outboard motors named NIKAWA, a combination of Osage Indian words meaning ‘river horse’.

The journey began in New York City and ended in Astoria, Oregon, with minimal portages.  I am now at the point where they have just reached the Mississippi from the Ohio.

I wondered why they left Lake Erie for a portage to a stream that would eventually lead to the Ohio rather than stay on the Great Lakes which they could have left at Chicago and travelled without any portages to the Mississippi to the headwaters of the Missouri where a portage would be necessary across the Continental Divide, but as I read I come to realize that the author, who is from Missouri as am I, is a landsman as I am not, and prefers rivers whose banks can be seen to water where land cannot.  And that he sought the peculiarities of towns and people along the way.

Mostly William Least Heat-Moon, the author, and his companion whom he calls Pilotis tied to docks and ate dinner and slept ashore.  The few times they have slept on board so far they have complained about the cramped space and lack of head room.  They have, of course, my greatest sympathy.

Despite our differences in temperament I am enjoying the book.

Here are a few quotes from it.

I couldn’t stop myself from hearing the words of Manuel Lisa, the early Missouri fur trader:  “I go a great distance while some are considering whether they will start today or tomorrow.”

Why hadn’t I listened to that old riverman Mark Twain:  “Traveling by boat is the best way to travel, unless one can stay at home.”

And most significantly this:

I disagree most fundamentally.  Least Half-Moon makes the mistake of postulating his own limitations as universal truths.  Just because the ocean is too overwhelming for him to comprehend does not mean that there are not others who are not overwhelmed, who even wish the ocean were greater.  And that ‘nothing else is so susceptible to personification and so much at the heart of our notions about life and death’ (than a river)  is nonsense, though you probably know what I think of personification of any natural element or force.

The photo has nothing to do with any of this.  I came across it while looking for something else and did not remember it.  I like it.  It is dated twelve years ago and so must have been taken in our Evanston condo.