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.)]

Scuba diving Part III: It feels like the First Time

My first diving buddy, George Hansen, could attest that when there is no visibility in a slimy green Texas dive park, it is hard to stay close to your partner. During an unusual September cold snap in Hill County, 14 years ago, together we descended the depths of Lake Whitney in 78° water while the dark skies drizzled rain above us. Taking only a couple 3 Lbs. weights on my belt and all the pool training of a neophyte with me, I set out to earn the SSI® Level 1 diver classification from the great Wm. Sandy Hardy, my dive master.

How does fresh-water certification diving compare to the real thing? Not as deep, not as clear, not as warm, not as much color, not as free, less enjoyable! Like watching 1970s-vintage public television on the tiny black and white Sony® TV in my parents’ study growing up, compared to watching modern cable-TV on today’s HD flat-screen behemoths. In just six weeks, back in 1998, I went from Lake Whitney in Texas to the underwater canyons outside San Pedro, near Ambergris Caye Belize, in Central America. Hello HBO®

Lumbering out of the skies onto the dirt airstrip of Ambergris Caye Belize, the heavy single-engine turboprop Cessna® Caravan dropped down to earth carrying a weighty load of divers and gear. Largely undiscovered fourteen years ago, this tiny Caribbean hamlet operated at a unhurried pace along the second largest barrier reef in the world. No one wore shoes on this tiny diver’s paradise; it seemed that we all had webbed feet.

image: Alberto Bradley

The Bradley family business services the active tourists flocking to the outer atolls on the Caribbean side of Central America. With a team of boys rotating through as fishing guides, jungle canopy leaders, and dive masters, the Bradleys showcase the wonders of this small country above and below sea level. Alberto Bradley took us to three major canyons along the coast: San Pedro, Victoria, and Tackle Box canyons.

Once outside the protective barrier reef, the waves slowly roll, punctuated by the occasional splash of frothy water, briny and blue in the mid-morning sun. The water temperature at ten degrees warmer than the freshwater in Texas made it quite comfortable. Visibility in the Caribbean Sea reached easily 100 feet; at the bottom of the canyon (110 feet) we looked up to see the boat waiting to pick us up. Seemingly scuba diving in a Godly aquarium, our dive group observed some of the finest excursions the ocean could offer.

One of the beguiling sensations of diving is swimming in the solitude and silence of deep water. Combined with the velvety abyss just over the blue horizon, a diver feels like an astronaut exploring a distant planetary seascape. Unlike the solar system, this world is teaming with life. Witnessing an undersea population explosion made fishing seem a lot easier looking up toward the surface, with millions of yellowtail snapper ready to take the hook. Small angelfish with their shimmering purple & gold skin caught my eye; and in a surprising example of cooperative living, I saw a spider crab inhabit the same apartment space as a 6-foot green Moray eel. Even in cramped quarters, they seemed to live together peaceably as neighbors.

just drop in a hook

During the first few dives in open water amidst the swirling Caribbean Sea, I learned that I am very small in relation to the rest of the world, especially one covered by salt water. My survivability existed within limited risk-management parameters compared to the danger of such a colossal ocean. Although we were trained for this adventure, inserting ourselves into vast, seemingly invisible currents limited our ability to maintain control over direction and speed of movement. Understanding human limits underwater fosters attitudes of patient, realistic, openness—anticipatory, actionless action* which requires a hopeful, situational awareness that this monstrous ocean will unfold in front of you at its own torpid pace. I wrote of this in a previous post (Part II) and will tell of a perfect example in a later post, as I describe a particular dive occurring on Sunday, October 25, 1998.

No offense to buddy George but in addition to the great visibility, my dive partner in Belize was so much easier to look at than he was. There were times she was so beautiful I thought it was a mermaid.

Diving taught me, that as in life, knowingly inserting yourself into a larger stream of consciousness and action, can carry you off to places to which you had not planned to go. Knowing the environment, watching the flow of circumstances, seeking experienced guides, observing forces, destinations and conclusions, often allow the diver or businessman to “plan the process” with some sort of foreknowledge or strategy. Otherwise, you go where the ocean current takes you.

writing ©Mark H. Pillsbury

(pictures are for personal use)
*note: again I am using an original application of these concepts to Scuba diving, learned reading Sue Monk Kidd's When the Heart Waits (HarperCollins 1990) see Ch. 2