Q: (So how's your job going, Mark?)  A: (can I answer like a writer?)

I saw this excerpt in a book about writing by Annie Dillard. It's a story told about an old man living on a small, rustic island on the Northwest corner of Oregon near an inlet with a strong current... Here's where we pick up the story:

"One evening," the man (Paul) told me, "Ferrar saw a log floating out in the channel. It looked yellow, like Alaska cedar; he hoped it was Alaska cedar. He rowed out to see it."

Everyone on the island scavenged the valuable logs, for building. If the logs did not wash up on the beach, it took a motorboat go get them in; they were heavy in the water.

"It was high tide, slack.  Ferrar saw the log, launched his little skiff at Fishery Point, and rowed out in the channel. Sure enough, it was that beautiful Alaska cedar, that pale yellow wood, just a short log, about eight feet, or he never would have tried it without a motor. I guess he thought he could row it in while the tide was still slack.

"He tied onto the log" (such logs often have a big iron staple hammered into one end) "and started rowing back home with it. He had about twenty feet of line on it. He started rowing home, and the tide caught him."

(From Paul's window, I could look north up the beach and see Fishery Point. One of Ferrar's sons still used that old rowboat-a little eight-foot pram, now painted yellow and blue. Paul's blue eyes caught mine again)

"The tide started going out, and it caught that log and dragged it south. Ferrar kept rowing back north toward his house. The tide pulled him south down the strait here" (Paul indicated the long sweep of salt water in front of his house) "from one end to the other. Ferrar kept rowing toward Fishery Point. He might as well have tied onto a whale. He was rowing to the north and moving fast to the south. He traveled stern first. He wanted to be going home, so toward home he kept pulling.”

“When the sun set, at about nine o'clock (late for northern latitude), he'd swept south the length of this beach, rowing north all the way. When the moon rose a few hours later-he told us-he saw he'd swept south past the island altogether and out into the channel between here and Stuart Island. He had been rowing through those dark hours. He continued to row away from Stuart Island and yet continued to see it get closer.”

"Then he felt the tide go slack, and then he felt it coming in again. The current had reversed.

"Ferrar kept rowing in the half moonlight. The tide poured in from the south. He kept rowing north for home; only now the log was with him. He and his log were both floating on the current, and the current was bearing them up and carrying them like platters. It started getting light at about three o'clock that morning, and he rowed back past this island's southern tip.  The sun came up, and he rowed all the length of this beach. The tide brought him back on home. His wife, June, saw him coming; she'd been curious about him all night."

Paul had a wide, loose smile. He shifted in his chair. He raised his coffee cup, as if to say, Cheers!

"He pulled up on his own beach. They got the log rolled beyond the tideline. I saw him a few days later. Everybody on the island knew he’d been carried out almost to Stuart Island, trying to bring in a log.”

“Everybody knew he just kept rowing in the same direction. I asked him about it. He said he had a little backache, but I didn't see the palms of his hands."

Paul looked into his empty coffee cup, pleased, and then looked through the window, still smiling. I started to carry my coffee cup to the sink, but he motioned me down (sit down!). He wasn't finished.

"So that's how my work is going," he said. What?

"You asked how my work is going," he said.

"That's how it's going. The current's got me. Feels like I'm about in the middle of the channel now. I just keep at it. I just keep hoping the tide will turn, and bring me in." ##

[portions excerpted from The Writing Life, ©Annie Dillard
(1989 Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.)]