Blog From the Sea of Cortez 2

                                             

I was sorry to miss the chance to travel recently with our friends, Angus (you may remember him as one of our first crew members) and his brother Graeme. Graeme is a whale biologist (a whale magnet actually) and over the twelve days I was gone, the boys on Circadia managed to spot tons (literally) of whales: pygmy sperm, humpback, pilot, fin and blue (including a baby the size of a city bus).

Blue Whale (photo, Graeme Ellis)

Each day, my thoughts turn more to the next phase of our journey, the Pacific crossing to French Polynesia. I trust the boat and I trust our crew (Tavish, also an early crew member, and his twin sister Farlyn will be sailing with us). Yet, I am anxious. Recently I read an interview with a woman climber. When asked how she overcame her fear, she answered that she didn’t, she just went anyways. I guess I can accept that; I can drag my fear along with me, like a bad knee, like a lost chance, something I’ll never get over.

Brown Boobies

But I am also curious. Flying home from Honduras, the earth seemed animate from above—veins of rivers, spines of mountains. But impossible to know, except in its small and particular wrinkles: a garden, a street, a beach. I’ve always wondered how it would feel to move slowly over a whole sea, to be intimate with immensity.

But I have no idea whether these poetic sentiments will sustain me. I’m pretty sure I won’t find the lack of fresh food or bathing difficult. I can go feral with the best of them. What I’m not sure of is what will happen to time. Will the days drag by or will they melt into one another? Will I be bored? And space—will I feel trapped, or could I be “…bound in a nutshell and consider myself a king of infinite space”.

In the meantime we have had one last interlude in the Sea of Cortez, with Kim’s brother, Doug, and his two small sons.
It is a simple landscape, this hot red stone and cool turquoise water. One where a person could go to remember themselves. Or forget—burn things off, wash them away. But mainly, where you are reminded of patience—how slowly everything here grows, decomposes, erodes.

Palo Blanco

I will spend the next week in Cabo San Lucas. A week of terra firma and time with my best girls, Jude and Darcy, who are flying down from Canada, before I take off on the next leg of this journey. A week to compose myself, maybe finally do some reading on the South Pacific, around the pool.
Frankly, I’m still a little hazy on the geography of our next destination. Not the best strategy, to wade into life’s unknowns perversely unarmed with knowledge. But the truth is I think there is only so much we can do to prepare for the biggest crossings, real and metaphorical, in life. You have to wait and see what happens and when the time comes, as we say in Canada, “just give er.”