Three Years in a 12-foot Boat (The Ladd Small-Boat Adventures Book 1)

by Stephen Ladd

We must all follow our own paths, for who else will pass that way? Perhaps no one, and we will have never found what only you can discover.

I had gone where all was unfamiliar so that I, the only constant, might emerge.

To friends I’ve been scarce and will be scarcer but a boat is built so come help prepare her for the solemn quest that’s our destiny

unto the sea to such wild shores and foreign lands as the goddess of that sea commands a fearful goddess, with rigid rites one such is the christening night

my belongings were scattered in all the different places I’d ever lived. I didn’t remember how to find them, how to get back home. I woke up.

Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park.

On a distant slope, a coyote stalked a herd of unsuspecting antelope. Only I saw it.

bare feet leaping over rippled sand releasing sparks of water kernels of sun

felt an urgency, as if life was passing me by. Yet I was living as fully as I knew how.

All around were new ecosystems: stands of poplar brush willow clumps and the prickly, low cactus each is a house that graciously accepts me how could I be a stranger here? each a tiny chapel I am thankful for the earth, this gift

The magic that is wilderness waned as man’s influence increased.

the joy of anticipation corrupted into existential dread. My future was too wide an abyss. An unformed identity stirred within me.

Professional life drew me out, balanced me. But the wanderlust remained, that spiritual unrest inherent to life.

This voyage began with euphoria, not anticlimax. It was difficult, but not excessively painful or dangerous. Later I would know true fear, but now I was blossoming, unchecked. I had discovered a new way to travel. God’s intimate details lay before me.

My capacity for wonder had been reinvigo-rated, and the object of my wonder was as internal as external...

Wave after wave of darkness advanced while the forces of light rallied with flaming clouds and clashing sunbeams. The battle was vast and violent. The sun retreated steadily westward across the heavens, followed by angry black swaths of sky, until night imposed its inexorable truce.

Exertion brought me here but here I must not exert because here, to try is to fail to plan my words is to forget what I was going to say

the lone sailor seeking secret fame

This was the bittersweet crux of traveling. On the brink of leaving, loneliness held me back, binding me to newfound friends, yet it pushed me away too, in search of a fuller love. The balance had now tipped in favor of leaving. Indian summer was over. The mornings were frosty again.

the fish can fly and the birds can swim and the water’s so warm that you want to jump in That’s reason enough right there to go off to the Caribbean

Our connection was weak and passing, like eye contact between a passenger on a speeding train and someone standing by the track. Soon the train will have passed, and, for the person left standing in the blank silence, there will be no sign of what has occurred but a faint reverberation. My journey was like that, except that I was both the one in motion and the one left alone in nature after the contact. Drifting, I saw the world while remaining still. I had the active sight of the mover and the passive sight of the motionless.

blackbirds swarming, blackbirds swarming! they twist and turn and merge and churn like smoke under a glass with all the shapes that clouds have been one fast upon the other and all the patterns of leaves long fallen

was this the sound that Van Gogh heard before he killed himself? a being made of a million beings a river of feathers a rope of birds

I saw young lovers, and their kisses gave me a bittersweet pleasure—bitter because I didn’t want to feel old, sweet because sentimentalism is one of middle age’s few rewards. But must life’s phases be sequential? Can one person combine the innocence of a child, the lust of an adult, and the wisdom of an elder? If yes, what is the price of such complexity?

Her body moved gracefully yet with a hint of awkwardness, as if she were in metamorphosis, or distracted by an internal dialogue.

Winds arose, and died again. Clouds gathered and dispersed.

festooned

The world’s longest river system streamed through my consciousness as I sank into sleep.

I marvel at you and at me, with you

Then, as now, I tingled with inexpressible joy. The world seemed so precious a gift.

people, places, nature—shifted in fragments, like looking through a kaleidoscope. As in my earlier travel, I had immersed myself in the foreign until only I remained constant. I had left my supports, and now the universe outside me was a collage, churning in the metal blades of a ceiling fan. Through a different lens could those shards become a lovely, logical whole? Could any belief system piece it all together? Perhaps, but piecing it together wasn’t my concern just then. My concern was to be more intensely myself. In that, I was succeeding.

You fill me as well as this poor vessel can hold

The panga was an outboard-motor dugout with strakes added for extra freeboard. The lancha was a large, paddled dugout with sharp ends. The chalupa was the river dugout, with flat projections at bow and stern on which to stand while poling or paddling. Finally there was the piragua, the one-man canoe.

I felt as if I had passed a test, and was now truly a sailor. With that realization came an intoxicating sense of freedom: the ability to go, with Squeak, anywhere in the watery world, unhindered, self-reliant. Freedom from man, but never from nature.

I didn’t particularly fear accidental death because I had years before accepted the outdoorsman’s responsibility to understand natural laws, and his motivation for exposing himself to them. I knew my motive: intensity of experience. The intensity was worth the risk. That calculation came automatically, but the danger posed by people seemed different. Nature is unintelligent and orderly, therefore predictable. Killers are intelligent, therefore malicious, unpredictable. I hypothesized that it was preferable to die by my own incompetence or bad luck than to be murdered. But with passing time I realized one danger was simply more familiar than the other. My responsibility was the same: weigh the odds, and minimize risks.

Here I am more fully myself because here I don’t belong here I thrive only through insistence My poem is the song of a satellite that passes, insistently and changes nothing

in the upper vale where none live and few come to find the peace eternally offered

she was used to being alone without feeling alone. The wild was her home, her family, her love. It wasn’t a new love, but it was the one that would last.

The science she practiced was very applied: an accumulation of small, good deeds.

Anew I stride for unknown shores behind me port and friends

Out the muddy river mouth through green protective isles to where the ocean impulse rocks me in the original cradle

to have ever worried about the workings of this great clock was a foolishness

Alone, at the ocean’s feet beyond the gaze of well-wishers I poise, like artist’s brush uplifted ready to add an indelible flourish to the world’s great design for where I go that place I make more real

in sweetwater torrents clouded heaven mediating

So much time had gone by, and so few miles covered. Was I really just putting it off? Was the fear impeding me? Even my relaxation required discipline. I told myself to trust my instinct on how long to linger, to recognize rest as preparation for work, to differentiate less between work and play if both are purposeful.

learning to be a good person seeking the seeker in himself We knew how close to get and what to hold back

I travel not to document the extinctions but to seek the places still left the garden that wasn’t big enough the origin I know I’m close when there’s no trace of man on that wild shore, nor on that sea but me

My home, though hardly larger than myself contains me, and my necessities, surprisingly numerous Less natural than the porpoise but more adaptive I can do this, and other things too I think, as I sway with the ocean which I fear, engage, study

reminding me to remember myself as a person who can be touched

I do not claim to know this ocean rather it symbolizes what I don’t know this ocean that is not home, but a medium I fear it, engage it, study it