Hilton Head Island: a little peace

Although the day in the marsh has been grey and cool, I put on a fleece and am having a martini and listening to music on deck.  It is always better to be outside.

I know I have said this many times, but the beauty here is always startlingly new.  And the quiet.

I sit looking out at gray and green and am at the moment at rare peace.

When Carol and I first met and married, which were almost simultaneous, she asked for thirty years.  We will have been married for thirty years this August, so I have willingly fulfilled my part of the bargain which has been the great chance grace of my life and will willingly extend the contract.

I am not quite halfway through my five year plan which if fulfilled will result in a voyage whose outcome cannot be known and may be fatal.  The willingness to undertake such an endeavor, after planning and preparation, is as some of you know my definition of nerve.  When you are 82 you don’t have much time left even if you seal yourself in a bubble.  

So I am enjoying this unexpected peace.  I am going to continue to enjoy this to me new marsh beauty.  I am going to enjoy my time with Carol.  And books.  And music.  And using my aged body.

In the previous entry about numbers, there are some that might be world records created not intentionally, but as casual byproducts of how I have lived.  The 3,000 mile first leg of the open boat voyage was later exceeded by a 4,000 mile passage from Singapore to Aden which might be the longest open boat passage ever.  Eight times in Force 12 might be too.  As might be putting the mastheads of four boats in the water.  And completing circumnavigations in five successive decades.  I don’t know that any of them are and I can’t prove them, other than the circumnavigations, but they might be.  They were not intentional but perhaps quantifications of a life that repeatedly over a very long time in our species terms but is a butterfly’s cough in terms of the universe pushed beyond the edge of human experience and put words together that too have pushed beyond that edge.  And if the body that has carried that life is still alive and healthy at the end of 2026 will again.

The image on my iPad is part of a music video, ‘Le vent nous porters’ which translates as ‘the wind carries us’ sung by Margarita Pirri.  You might enjoy it.  Here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyzBuo53u_0

To life.  

And pushing as hard as you can as long as you can and being grateful for whatever moments of peace you find.