Horizon

In my Chicago neighborhood a horizon is hard to come by. I venture to the shore of Lake Michigan or travel vertically to the upper floors of skyscrapers to when I need to see one. This is the legacy of our glacial past, which left us with barely a hill to stand upon. Far from being discouraged by this, I have searched out unique horizons for most of my life. Most are memorable for their association with the sun, but not all.

In the east, Florida’s sun coalesces from a deformed reddish glow that comes from deep below the Atlantic’s horizon only to set a white-hot orb amidst the cheers of the revelers at the tip of North America. And in the West off the California coast, the naked sun unceremoniously plunges into the cold Pacific. In the middle of Lake Michigan it rises and sets with no hint of the influence of land. And as a young man I watched the golden globe rise and set over a horizon of the picturesque islands of the Aegean and the Adriatic, not to mention the vast Mediterranean Sea.

Then, as impossible is seems, there is the lack of sunrise and sunset. In the seas above the Arctic Circle the sun heads straight for the horizon and inexplicably starts back up while still high in the sky permeating everything in a golden fluorescence. In the same region’s deep valleys the sun secrets itself behind mountain silhouettes only to hint at its magnificence. This premature horizon makes winter seem endless.

In Osaka I stood opened jawed before the window of a high rise hotel and I watched the staccato skyline taper off into the distance demarcated by the sickly glow of mercury vapor. Then after a sleepless night I watched it inundated with the ghostly mingling of dew and smog.

On a recent afternoon with the sun high in the sky I sat waiting for the traffic light on Balbo Street to change. I looked east across Lake Shore Drive and focused from the street, to the deserted harbor, and finally, settled on Four Mile Crib sitting three miles east of Monroe Harbor.

At first the horizon appeared flat but this was an illusion. The water close to shore was sheltered from the Northwest wind and barely showed a ripple. Further out though, the horizon was roiling. The closer I focused the more detail I discerned at the interface between the water and the sky. Waves were galloping south in riotous fashion with white caps decorating the peaks and a deep cerulean blue concealing the troughs.

The detail was millimeters thick. I felt as if I was looking at it with the oil lens of a microscope. Then a horn blared and the moment was lost. I raced across the intersection and turn north towards home. I was glad not to be on the lake that day.

This summer I had a similar experience. A stiff east wind had been blowing along Lake Huron’s length for several days, so when I left my snug anchorage that morning I resigned myself to a lumpy ride west toward Mackinac Island. This time instead of sitting at a traffic light I was steaming south through DeTour Passage between Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Drummond Island with Lake Huron before me.

Again I focused on the horizon. That is after dodging the two crisscrossing ferries and then steering clear of a several-football-field long lake freighter. It had descended from St. Mary’s River and was also bearing for the freedom of the open lake.

On its southern end the DeTour Reef Lighthouse demarcates DeTour Passage from the lake. It is an imposing structure that sits in solitude surrounded by water and submerged rocks. A somber sight on any day, it was especially so this cool gray day with low clouds scudding overhead. The horizon beyond it was as alive as the one I watched off Balbo Street, but this time I was heading straight for it at 7 knots.

Maneuvering in large seas can be nerve racking. I wonder how the boat and crew will take the assault. Neither, especially the former, has let me down and this time was no different. We were lifted onto the swells and glided off their backsides into the troughs. It is difficult to describe being a part of all this moving water. That is for another time.

Once amongst the waves the horizon disappears. Your worldview shrinks to what can be seen and felt within a few boat lengths. The next horizon I remember was in Little Traverse Bay where it was tinted by a perfect amber sunset that melted into the lake and into my memory.

Maybe it is because I have lived my life deprived of horizons that I hold fiercely onto the memory of each. Maybe it is how the sun and the earth play this game of sunrises and sunsets, vying to see who will be the most spectacular. But probably it is the realization that each one is unique: one time, one meeting (ichigo, ichie). Never to be repeated again.

Time has a way of focusing the mind especially at this time of year. I remind myself not to become complacent. Not to hunker down in my neighborhood of bungalows and wait for Spring but to venture out and seek the next horizon.

December, 2011

Nature

Late one stormy night while driving the back roads of Chicago I spied Mr. Fox and Mr. Rabbit in close proximity. The former was on the move with his long bushy tail trailing straight out behind him, except that is when he stopped to mark every other tree. The latter, with ears erect and tracking, looked alert despite being as still as Michelangelo’s David.

To the north lie the crumbling wall of an ancient cemetery, and to the south a tall uninviting, but unobtrusive green corrugated metal fence of a large industrial concern. My wife’s relatives repose just over the north wall and it is also the location of my first summer job where I most likely cut the grass around their graves. Thus it, the cemetery, is a familiar place. Not in the least creepy or at least not until I saw Mr. Fox and began to think of his nighttime exploits.

He looked dusky, as all city dwelling animals tend to look. Go to the suburbs and the squirrel’s fur radiates multiple hues, but here in my bungalow’s backyard they come in any color as long as it is dull grey. And that goes for the sparrows and possums. I am not sure about the skunks. I only smell them as they pass under my backyard windows. Of all the animals that inhabit my little corner of Chicago the raccoons seem the exception. They always look fit and well groomed, even as I try to extricate them from the attic.

But that is beside the point, let me not get distracted. The sight of the rabbit’s close call further confirmed my thoughts, thoughts of the seriousness of the natural world. I see a dog wag its tail and smile, a cat purrs in my lap and I anthropomorphize them. But I think if set free without a loving human to feed them, they would quickly turn on me to satisfy their hunger.

The natural world is an unforgiving place. We have done a marvelous job of isolating ourselves from it, but occasionally I seek it out. I have traveled to unruly lands: Israel moments before the Yom Kippur War, Northern Ireland in the first year of the Troubles and Greece during the junta. Closer to home I have hiked in the wilderness home of the grizzly and summited a few 12,000 foot peaks and even closer, I have spent many days on the blue waters of the Great Lakes.

Of all the time spent on the Great Lakes, many more hours have been consumed contemplating the weather. I know that if I make a mistake I am in for an unpleasant experience, if not a dangerous one. I hope for an uneventful passage. More than hope, I plan for it, and contrary to popular opinion I often remember an uneventful voyage and forget a bad one.

The natural world is not divorced from the middle of the city. How many life and death struggles take place each evening. Late one afternoon as I walked to the now destroyed Michael Reese Hospital parking structure I heard the shrill cries of a mother squirrel and her baby. The dense hedges that surrounded the parking garage supported a remarkable diversity of creatures and it was there that I witnessed the drama.

I went searching for the commotion and saw a large crow, several times the size of the mother squirrel, raiding the nest with a yelping baby squirrel between its beak. I startled the crow causing it to drop the baby. Mother squirrel quickly grabbed her baby by the fur and fled back to the nest. The crow did not hesitate to bound up and kidnap the baby once again. The mother’s unrestrained aggression towards the crow was futile, it barely noticed her.

I decided that as unseemly as this spectacle was, I best not get involved. Turning away I dare not look back. This was nature playing out its destiny. It was on a smaller scale than on the plains of Africa or the northern reaches of the Americas where lions and wolves cull the herds of antelope and caribou, but it was just as sobering.

This event came back to me as I watched the fox and the rabbit’s paths cross. For all our preconceived notions while sitting in the comfortable cocoon of modernity, the natural world is unrelenting. I have no illusions that the lake is concerned with my well being. If I get roughed up on the way to the next port I am grateful to reach safe harbor. Just as I am sure that Mr. Rabbit was, in some rabbit way, happy to have escaped the notice of Mr. Fox . . . for this time at least.

Waves

Surfing down a wave in a 17,000 pound 32 foot piece of pointed plastic can be simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. The noise resembles a washing machine’s spin cycle. As I am lucky enough to have a functioning autopilot I stay ready to slide off my comfortable seat and disengage it to save our little ship. If I did not have one then I would have already anticipated what the following wave was going to do and started to correct for it.

Each boat responds in a unique way and each wave presents a different challenge. Waves come in waves. On the Great Lakes, my hub of experience, they come in series of sixes or sevens. Each series is characterized by increasingly larger waves. Occasionally one is demarcated by a large wave out of proportion to the others. Waves in the Great Lakes have a short period (the time between crest) of about 6 to 8 seconds, so it can be several minutes between series. And within that cycle there are even longer cycles, which generate larger waves. These big ones sneak up on you.

The Perfect Storm made us familiar with rogue waves. Of course I am not talking about anything on that scale. The waves on our fresh water lakes are known more for their steep close packed nature than their towering size. Our waves beat you to pulp with their quick repeatability, rather than engulf you whole like those of the oceans. That said, remember the Edmund Fitzgerald and beware.

If driving into them, we pound; if traveling across, we swing like an upside-down metronome. If they are behind, well, then we slow as we get sucked back into the troughs, and speed up as we are lifted and flung forward by the front of the approaching wave. Speed can increase from 5 to 12 knots in an instant. Some following waves quietly gurgle as they pass. Others pick up the stern to a point where gravity takes over and starts the boat careening into the wave that has just passed.

It is then that the boat does something usually the purview of young bleached blond men and women on exotic islands, surf. The boat feels lively and light as it skips along on the foaming water of the breeching wave. When the speed of the wave matches that of the boat, the rudder loses it grip and the boat starts to turn right across the offending wave. This (broaching is the technical term) cannot be allowed to happen.

If sideways to a sizable wave it can overwhelm and flipped the boat over on its side or worse. I turn the wheel as far to the left as possible, far enough to feel the rudder bite into the water and the bow begins to swing to the left. Of course I do not want to go too far that way either, so a bit before the neutral point I bring the wheel back to center.

All this takes several very long seconds and thankfully large waves, in most cases, herald the beginning of a new series with smaller waves in the forefront. I take a breath and recover my heading. Once in a stable rhythm the autopilot is reengaged. I sit back to wait for the next one to appear. It may or may not, so I keep alert.

I have been at the helm of many boats from square sided tubs to sleek double enders. From heavy cruising boats to ultra light racers. All behave differently. My present boat does not sail but powers through the water pushed in front of a large four bladed propeller with over two hundred pounds of torque behind it. It seldom exhibits any strain despite the conditions it finds itself in.

She — the boat — has a fine entry that flattens out to a shallow V and ends in a broad, billboard like stern. The tons of water that make up a following wave love to push it around, but thanks to a large rudder and a long deep keel it is not often bested.

The operative word here is often. Off of Michigan’s Little Sable Point this year an odd combination of wind, waves and terrain, both above and below the water, twist us in such a fashion to dislodge furniture, nick-knacks and anything else not Velcro-ed down, including us. It occurred with such a noise that I considered, if only for a second, the sanity of being out on the water.

In another boat, like our former Swedish sailboat Lenore, the wave would have simply parted at the stern and passed by with a whoosh. Lenore loved — more than me — strong winds and big seas. She had a hidden stern as fine and pointed as her bow. A boring boat in anything less than 15 knots of wind she became more comfortable as conditions worsened. Once her sail was shortened she would steer herself, managing tacks and gybes with ease.

Lovely she was, but slow and cramped and so Carrie Rose, the 17,000 pound piece of pointed plastic, replaced her in 2003. We traded ocean-crossing ability for the RV comforts of a coastal cruiser. A good choice overall, but a choice that has me wishing for her when the waves get their dander up and start to carry us downwind on another adventure.

October 2011

Rocks

Rocks are not a big part of my life in Chicago. There is the occasional one I dig out of the garden and sometimes I find myself admiring the fossils that reside in the stone that make up the buildings downtown. But that is about it. I found John McPhee’s Basin and Range interesting but geology was my least favorite science in college. I admit to a fascination with Japanese rock gardens and the Japanese veneration of particular rocks. Last year I sat at the edge of the Ryoan-ji dry rock garden in Kyoto and quietly soaked in the ambiance.

But in the Northern reaches of Michigan and into Canada the rocks demand attention. The farther north Charlotte and I traveled from Chicago the more subservient the environment became to its rocks: telephone poles are supported by piles of rocks at their base because there is no soil to bury them, foundations that only go down inches rather than feet, and minimal top soil—most of it having been pushed to central Illinois by the glaciers that scraped this area down to bedrock.

Rocks define the North Channel of Ontario where Carrie Rose, our 32’ Nordic Tug, carried us this spring and summer. Our attention was directed to avoiding the multitude of barely submerged rocks that inhabit these waters. To keep from hitting them we used our eyes, two sets of charts, several local cruising guides, an outdated Garmin chart plotter, an even older back-up GPS and a newly purchased navigation program for my MacBook with another GPS plugged into its USB port. Believe me we needed them all.

After much travail I was able to load the computer with the current Canadian and U.S. charts. They display rocks that mariners have been charting since Admiral Bayfield made his way here in the early 1800s. But there is no guarantee that the charted rocks will be where they are supposed to be and that uncharted ones will miraculously surface. Every cruising guide on every page cautions this inevitability.

As I write this Carrie Rose is having a well-deserved rest in Petoskey, MI. This is the land of the famed Petoskey stone. These dusty grey stones have a lace like filigree pattern and are the coral remnants of an ancient sea. During past visits we bought a small bud vase and a Pandora charm made out of them. This year we decide to find our own and so, the bikes were taken off the boat, cleaned of spider webs and ridden down a path west of the harbor. At the first beach that appeared slightly remote we walk down the stairway to the beach. Once there, with heads bowed, we start searching. Within 30 seconds I find one, and then another and another. Granted these were not prime examples but after a little cleaning, sure enough they were Petoskey stones. I now understand, as one local told me, that the entire landscape from here to Mackinac Island is composed of them, just waiting to be found by naïve southerners like us. When we get back to the boat Charlotte sits sanding our treasure to bring out their hidden details. With this level of intensity she should have them gleaming by next year. A worthy pursuit considering she has just retired.

We left Chicago in early June to get to the North Channel of Lake Huron and cruise amongst its ancient rocks. The rock culture is intense there. Mountains of gleaming white quartz defy description. Your eyes want to attribute the whiteness to something else besides the rock itself, but you can touch it and feel the sun’s heat that radiates from its mirror like surface.

The celebrated islands in the North Channel are the Benjamin’s. They are a small group of islands in the shape of a C that are composed of pink quartz. It is not easy to get to them, nor is it easy to stay. Their poor anchorage is exposed to winds from many directions and its bottom, which has been scoured by thousands of anchors has questionable holding. To further complicate matters, most days it is filled with cruising boat vying for the few safe places to anchor.

To climb its treeless dome of exposed quartz is to commune with rocks as old as any found on the planet. For a Christian nation it smacks of animism. This is behavior I expect from the Japanese with their reverence of Shinto’s kami-sama, spirits associated with the natural world. Most of the national parks in Japan have Shinto shrines to provide for the spiritual needs of their visitors. But here amongst the fifty and sixty year old middle class of North America it seems sacrilegious.

Of course as luck would have it Carrie Rose broke down just as we entered the Benjamin’s. We were towed east to Little Current, the largest town on Manitoulin Island, for repairs. We linger there for two weeks waiting for engine parts and never setting foot on the coveted terrain we had been removed from. Instead we spent our time with the town’s friendly and caring people, and with the transient community that cruise this rock-ridden archipelago each summer. A couple we barely knew offered us the key to their behemoth Ford and encouraged us to take in some of the sites while they were away cruising. We accepted and went north into the odd landscape of the Le Cloche Mountains. Once the size of the Rockies these hills of white quartz are billions of years old and they look it.

I wish I could give you an accurate description. The land is an odd mixture of trees, water and convoluted, rounded stones folded upon themselves. The shear rock faces radiates heat, and foliage hangs on for its life, as do the cottages that are tucked into every crevasse. The energy the earth poured into this landscape for billions of years is tangible. I am unaccustomed to such intensity and it makes me nervous.

I sense the billion-year history of these rocks and think of my few meager decades. I leave the North Channel sobered. It put my allotment of consciousness in context. The time here on earth before I become an elemental particle again is the universe’s gift and I better not waste it!

September 2011

Coasting

I thought we had enough time, is a common refrain on Lake Michigan. At present I am sitting through the third thunderstorm of the last three days. I thought I had enough time to get to our destination by today but I did not. Prudence dictates I remain in the harbor and it gives me some unexpected time to look around and absorb the scene. In the last few days I have seen a cast of characters pass through the different harbors I have been sequestered in.

The best were two elderly gentlemen in a small open sailboat of British design who are sailing, weather be damned, south along the east coast. After seeing what they have been through I feel like a wimp for staying put through these few “inconsequential” major storms.

Then there was the couple that spent the last eight summers cruising the Great Lakes in their large traditional (read slow) ketch. They go where they want, when they want with no strings attached.

A fellow Nordic Tug owner whom I have met at rendezvous’ appeared late yesterday in the heart of the worst of the worse weather. I “caught” him as he turned into his slip with the wind blowing his little ship a beam. Once tied up he described fighting progressively higher winds and seas as he approached the harbor only to turn back three miles to rescue a disabled sailboat.

This reverie could go on but I will stop. The storm clouds have move on to reek havoc over the horizon and blue sky has returned, as have the tourist that fled at the first sign of rain. There is a bit of going native about cruising even if every harbor town is full of ice cream and t-shirt shops. I have hardly seen a soul on this trip up the eastern shore, that is excluding the fishermen three miles out from every harbor mouth,

I have had the lake to myself. This was most evident while passing through the Manitou Passage. A lonely stretch of water bounded by South and North Manitou Islands to the west, and Sleeping Bear and Pyramid Points to the east. It is primordial compared to other areas of the lake I have experienced. The forces and the time involved in shaping this terrain, both above and below the surface of the lake, occupy my thoughts as I negotiate through the various nuns and cans, and lighthouses that mark the passage.

I get the same feeling when I focus my telescope back in time from the moon, to the planets, to the Milky Way, and to our local group of galaxies and beyond. My mind relaxes, shedding filters that are normally in place and roams. It is a common thread for most voyagers. It is why you can meet people as you wander and instantly fall in sync with them.

At least for me there is superstition involved in this. When I was growing up my Sicilian mother (bless her soul) enforced many different entreaties. The oddest being that opening an umbrella inside the house meant a family member would die. I am sure I killed off a few of my dear aunts due to my inattention. My traveling companion Charlotte is a good antidote to this line of thinking. She always speaks the obvious in any situation. I seldom do, fearing I will tempt faith. I am not convinced this is a good practice but I have silenced my objection to it.

One thing that differentiates coasting from other types of boating is housekeeping. Besides charting and never ending maintenance someone has to shop and cook, wash the dishes and make the bed, and do the laundry. Granted the grass doesn’t need to be cut or the garden weeded but the above more than makes up for the lack of those chores. This is why charter captains and their pampered guest exist.

Maybe one day I will succumb to be pampered but not today. Today I will swing in each beam sea, drive into whitecaps and squalls, ghost through early summer fog and wait out weather in a safe harbor.

Coasting involves pairing down to the essentials, no end of endless horizons and fellow travelers that are not so much about the trip as they are about the spirit of the trip. So when I really think about it I do have enough time, because how much time does it take to absorb the spirit of a place.

August 2011

Crossing

I am sure there is a gospel song called “Crossing to the Other Side” but that is not what I am about here. I am about crossing Lake Michigan from west to east. It is always a judgment call when to leave and I usually get a case of irritable bowel syndrome before setting off. It shows I take the venture serious.

The best times in the past have been the morning after one of our hell raising storms. The world, or at least the atmosphere, calms down for about three days; its energy spent. Then the cycle begins over again.

At times like this the lake is flat and oily. Not much good for sailors but just right for Carrie Rose to glide along soaking up the miles at 8 knots. And there are a lot of miles to soak up on Lake Michigan. The shortest crossing is about 45 miles, the longest 100 plus. I wonder how many Chicagoans have crossed the lake in small boats. It must be thousands. We should have a club like the circumnavigators do, but this is a topic for another day.

Once I get there, mid lake is an interesting place, or maybe phenomenon is a better word. It has a crystalline quality as if the air has had all contaminates scrubbed out. It is sweet and it glows.

As with most things there are rituals involved with casting off. If I am not coming back for a while I take the bridle off my mooring. Otherwise, by the time I get back it will be covered with green slime, ugh! I make a note of the time and the engine’s hours. The GPS’s are warmed up with the appropriate waypoints entered. Carrie Rose passes her neighboring sailboats and heads out between the green and red towers at the harbor mouth. Once clear I increase the RPM’s to 1700 and off I go, trailing Chicago’s skyline.

It takes a long time to lose sight of its cliff face of buildings but after a cursory look, I look forward. Depending on the time of day I negotiate through a gaggle of sailboats and then pass the defunct Wilson Ave. water intake crib with its contingent of cormorants patrolling the surface of the lake for tasty morsels.

In deeper water, some 5 to 10 miles out I catch up (pardon the pun) with the fishing fleet. When I first started cruising I would try to avoid them. Altering my course while still distant but somehow I always ended up right in their path or in the path of their multiple propeller seizing fishing lines trailing off the stern. Now I know better. I keep steaming along, knowing that most times their cryptic trolling pattern will move them out of my way by the time I reach their first noted position.

Then it is wind/water/sky in differing doses depending on the day. As you can imagine it is never the same twice. I settle in and monitor the horizon, the radar, and engine temperature and oil pressure gauges. I listen to every tappet’s clicking, monitoring for any change in tone that may portend disaster.

I have neglected to mention a device that I have invested countless hours and treasure in, the autopilot. It is a Simrad AP24. I only say this so those interested can look it up and marvel. Once free and clear of most obstructions I turn it on and sit back. The autopilot keeps me on course with a minimum of effort; this is an illusion. I know this because steering a boat on a single heading requires much anticipation, skill and in challenging weather a tremendous amount of concentration.

On this day the winds were diminished but still from the north, as they have been for weeks. So, of course I knew it would be a rollicking ride across a beam sea and I was not disappointed. Carrie Rose is a wonderful boat but has a wicked roll. There is nothing gentle about it. She gets up on one side and quickly snapped to the other. At times like this I wish for a seat belt. The ride just got worse from mid lake until I entered the St. Joseph-Benton Harbor breakwater.

It is disconcerting to be wallowing in the open lake and then abruptly change to the flat water of the harbor channel: to go from open water navigation to close quarters maneuvering. To complicate things further — though less now that I have experience to draw upon — I am often somewhere new. I change from tensing every muscle to stay in my seat, to tensing every sense to get into my assigned slip.

Sound like fun? Well, not always but more often than not, and in the depths of February these are great memories to relive. Maybe I will write that song and get Kris Kristofferson to sing it!

July 2011

Prepare

Today is the 11th. It has been 6 days since I started my leave and I am now just getting around to a nap. In those 6 days I put the finishing touches on my new dingy (four coats of varnish, rowing hardware, garboard drain), worked out how to hang it from the davits, tucked away the garden with weed suppression cloth and mulch, helped a friend bring his boat to the harbor and put up its two beautiful wooden mast, paid an enormous credit card bill, said goodbye to friends, packed and then move everything — and I mean everything — to the boat where I seemed to start the process all over again.

It has been a blessing that the weather prevented us from venturing across the lake. There is never enough time, but at some point enough is enough and you have to leave. Lists have there place but only if you are willing to disregard them. I have spent a lifetime reading about other people’s adventures. A common theme is that they depart before their lists are completed. And this is usually after years of study and hard work.

Any task requires triage. There is a compelling scene in an episode of MASH where one of the surgeons needs a third party to tell him that the patient he is trying to save requires too much attention and that he needs to care for other less wounded soldiers. He could not make the decision himself but once nudged he moves on.

Some of us are better at separating the wheat from the chafe than others. Many people spend their allotted time in preparation and never leave. They delay, waiting for the perfect moment: for the right amount of money, the next electronic gadget, the perfect mate. It never happens and so, they stay put and watch others leave.

I am using a trip as a metaphor. I suppose if I were a better writer I would not have to tell you this, but if I had waited to be a better writer I would never be writing this. I wonder about the Lady Gaga’s of the world. Granted she is talented but so are many others and they never get anywhere. What drove her, what drives any of us?

I have often cajoled young medical assistants whom I find intelligent and therefore bored with their jobs to go back to school. None have taken my medical school suggestion but several have become nurses. To motivate them I tell them in four years they’ll be done, and if they do nothing they will be four years more frustrated.

Despite all the insurance payments we make each month most things in life require a leap of faith. You can get educated up the ying-yang and still not amount to anything, but not likely. Besides, being well educated has its perks. For one thing most of the stuff that other people worry about you can disregard. There is nothing like calculus, chemistry, physics and biology to give you a firm basis in how the world actually works.

I guess I should explain what’s got me down this path. It is leaving the harbor. My wife Charlotte, after close to thirty years in the corporate world (because she went back and got educated for a life in IT), retired. And because I have always had ants in my pants, I took a leave from the office and we decided to cruise to Canada. The North Channel at least and maybe Georgian Bay in the northern waters of Lake Huron.

So we sit here in Montrose Harbor in the fog and rain of early June, and wait for a favorably day to cross to Michigan. It is often like this on the Great Lakes. The weather has a way of dictating the schedule. I have learned to listen to mother nature. And just how do I do that, well mainly on the Internet these days.

Prior to the Internet we were at the whim of the marine weather broadcast on channel 1. Listening to it was a bit like listening to the Chairman of the Fed: hanging on every word and searching for their hidden meanings. Now I can see the jet stream and the radar and the satellite pictures and data from buoys in the middle of the lake and read a synopsis of current and future trends. I can watch the next storms come off the northwest Pacific or be gathered up from the Gulf and flung at us by the jet stream.

It is not perfect but it is a whole lot better then it used to be. So I hope that after all this I am prepared. I think the fact that I can nap, subconsciously means I am. We will see. Remember there are no guarantees but that is not reason to try.

June 2011

Landscape

The earth is inconceivably old, so ancient that to allow ourselves — conceited moderns — to dwell on the inexorability of time, well, all the anti-depressants in the world might not be able to quell the anxiety. And in the context of the universe the earth is but a four billion year old infant.

Our nervous system is designed to deal with this. It is in the business of dampening our sensory experience. If you ever take off the dark glasses put on your dilated eyes by the ophthalmologist you have a sense of the overwhelming nature of our world. Any light, let alone the sun, will paralyze. It is the same for the temporal universe.

It might be better not to think of what this means for us personally. This is the job of religion. Most are founded on the premise that there must be more, this cannot be all there is. You mean we will never see each other again, there has to be a better place, where do we go when we go, what about our thoughts and prayers, and what about our stuff: written words, sculptures, boats, telescopes, children, relationships.

What about them? I doubt the earth cares. We, or at least I, need to get over it. At times I think I have, but dark thoughts still linger in the back of my cranium. After watching my father die a cruel sudden death and my mother a lingering one I thought I was liberated. Now I am not so sure. Each stiff morning I look into the bathroom mirror and evaluate my life. It is instructive.

It happens in an instant. I am amazed how quickly a life, at least mine, can be reviewed. And this is before I have even had a cup of tea. Once the shower’s warm water hits my body the moment is over only to be relived around seven the next morning. What I find interesting is, rather than being depressed by this, I look forward to it. This condensed reverie makes me feel alive.

The fact that I continue to care is comforting. I still have goals and fight the cynicism built up layer-upon-layer year-after-year. I feel secure in my positive moroseness. I welcome it. It scratches an itch that needs to be scratched.

And so this lead me to my inner landscape, or maybe landscapes, the plural is better as there seem to be many. How do I see them — I doodle. The sculptor Darrin Hallowell forbade me to say the d-word. I sketch. I draw. I do not doodle. And though I greatly respect him, I am not sure I agree. I am untrained and have had a similar style since I was a kid.

I know it is a weird habit. I do it everywhere and on anything. I especially like the white butcher block paper that so often covers the tables of Italian restaurants but I am not averse to marking up the agenda of quarterly meetings. I think I have done some of my best work while eating ravioli with marinara sauce. The vast expanse of white paper provides an almost unlimited palette except for wine glasses and the breadbasket.

It is an unthreatening surface unlike an 8 ½” by 11” sheet of paper, a blank document in Word, a page in a sketchbook or the white gesso expanse of a canvas. These require a commitment and invite criticism. To use them I have to expose part of myself to the outside world. Turn myself inside out as it were.

If I like what I have done, I tear off the red stained drawing and sign it (take ownership really). Once home it is filed away in a thick folder with many other similar scrapes. When I worked in steel I used many of these ideas to create at first 2 dimensional, and then through the prodding of my fellow students, 3-D sculptures. I learned I could only make what I could draw.

I call my style expressionless abstraction. Who knows what any of it means. I enjoy people’s reactions when they see the work. They try hard to make it concrete. To make it represent a thing, anything, from the real world. But sadly it is a little like trying to find Yankee Doodle Dandy in a work by Pierre Boulez. It ain’t gonna happen.

All of us have an inner landscape. For some it is so painful that they will do almost anything to suppress it. Think Michael Jackson, Diana Arbus, Mark Rothko, Virginia Wolf. For others they cannot keep it in. It gets expressed in every waking moment of every day. Think Picasso, Dickens, Bach, Ansel Adams. Their willingness and courage to share their inner vision, even if in the end it killed them, has left us with an incredible body of work. It fills the museums, libraries and concert halls of the world.

And here I speak of time again. The above artists occupy at most 500 years. I am not sure how far back we have examples. The cave paintings in France are still only 30,000 years of history and do little to fill in the billions of years. But this is a misunderstanding on my part. Our inner landscapes are the expression of all that time. Time well spent solving problems and creating new problems to solve.

Volume 5855 (4), 5/20/11

Months

I have frequented the Art Institute of Chicago’s Japanese print gallery for close to forty years. In all that time I doubt that I have seen the same print twice. The exotic prints fueled my life long fascination with Japanese culture. A recent show exhibited prints with hidden calendars. Many sequestered within the intricate folds of kimono.

The prints were made during the reign of the lunar year. To plagiarize the posted information there are long months (30 days) and short months (29 days) within a lunar year. The concept of the long month — dai no tsuki — got me thinking about how to react to the recent events in Japan: how to come to grips with the loss of a coast, with statements regarding the safety of plutonium-saturated soil, with a decimated fishing fleet and with the destruction of four nuclear reactors.

How do our collective psyche process the lost of life due to the recent seismic activity in Indonesia, Haiti, and Japan? Even a decade ago we could not relive the calamity minutes after it occurred. We would read about it in unadorned black and white text, see a few pictures of the aftermath, but not watch the ocean engulf towns, roads, cars and trucks. It is nearly too much to comprehend.

I admit to being risk adverse. I do not need to see tragedy to know it occurs. I blame this reticence on my medical training. While medicine is a fascinating study, it is also cruel. Injury and disease do not discriminate. We are prey to its whims whether as spectators or participants.

At least technologically we are better off than our ancestors. That is if the electricity and the “supply chain” remain intact. The world, or I should say our place in the world, is tenuous. The earth shakes and turns itself inside out with no thought of retribution. Motion is a constant no matter if on a quantum scale or on the scale of colliding galaxies. In the end it really has nothing to do with us.

At best we attempt to engineer safety into our constructs. At worse we ignore it. When the roofs blew off of the reactor buildings I thought of stored fuel rods. When I saw helicopters dropping water, I thought of how many it would take and how much fuel would be needed. And when I saw fire trucks spraying water into the buildings, I thought of the courageous workers who must know they have sacrificed themselves to protect their nation.

My wife Charlotte and I traveled from Tokyo to Hiroshima and back last year. All the time marveling at the beauty, the infrastructure, and the density that appeared out the window of our sleek train. And as I reminisce, I think of the vast population trapped a few hundred miles South of the epicenter of the earthquake. I find myself grieving for the people of Japan as I did for my nation when I watched the second plane crash into the World Trade Center.

In New York City last summer I had the privilege of seeing Hounsai Daisosho, Urasenke’s retired 15th generation Grand tea master, make a bowl of tea and place it on the altar of a recently restored Catholic church just a block from Ground Zero. It was a solemn moment imbibed with thoughts of the sacrifice our nation has made since that day.

And now transpose that event — the bowl of tea offered to make the abstraction of peace a reality — to another nation in need of peace to honor its dead and to rebuild its national treasure. If a bowl of tea can begin to do that, and I think it can, then let both our nations begin to rebuild their spirit.

It is time to rejoin our commitment to each other’s spiritual needs, to each other’s success, and to each other’s commonality. Many long months will be needed to reverse this tragedy, but all that have been lost deserve no less.

Volume 5852 (4), 4/29/11

Creatures

Creatures surround me in Japan. They have no blood or sinew to move around with but they are everywhere. There is nothing creepy or supernatural about them. They are just there, as the birds that reside in the trees and bushes of my backyard are, even if I cannot see them. Out a bus window, when an elevator door closes, in subterranean walkways, up the side of buildings; I am aware of them.

They are piled up in arcade games, hang off cell phones and backpacks, stand guard at temple entrances. They advertise on the side of shopping bags, enforce rules on roadway signs and adorn bento boxes. They are corporate logos and live on the front grills of cars.

The creatures can be sacred and profane, cajoling and demanding, edgy and cute, entertaining and menacing. And I mean “and”. What I have noticed about the Japanese is their comfortableness with the singularity of duality. I lack a better way to describe it.

Here in the USA life is more cut and dry. We have only two parties (usually), we like things simple, just give us two choices and that is enough. Be dam-ed with the complexities of the world. We want it one way or another and are comfortable with this even if we know it is a gross misrepresentation.

Think of our beloved city of Chicago. We are going to have a mayor not named Daley. And though we know this is for the best, deep down inside I am sure even strident opponents of the Daley regime are nervous. They had a well-defined foe in him. It was they against him, but those days are over.

Of course this duality does not exist for all creatures. Some are painfully cute and others, well, I know to give them a wide berth. They may be comfortably evil, but they are evil none-the-less.

I see “cute culture” in all walks of life in Japan. In cityscapes and on mountain trails, whether state sanctioned or anarchistic. It is hard to miss it walking down the streets of Tokyo. It seems a large part of the society participates in or consumes it in various ways.

I am part and partial to this. When I look around my house I see everything from trolls to saints perched on various precipices. Recently after my mother died I was sorting through her things and came upon several of my father’s beloved objects. He always had a small troll (who’s hair he had closely shorn) hanging from his keychain. In opposition to his worship of false gods my mother had a small icon of her namesake St. Teresa close by.

I suppose there is a certain duality in this but let’s get back to Japan. One thing I notice is that most the creatures are fuzzy save for one and that is the only reptile I see represented, the frog. Froggy is everywhere.

Somehow I missed froggy on my first trip to Japan. My senses were overwhelmed but not this time. This time I saw frogs on top of frogs with more baby frogs clamoring all over them. At one particularly large example I asked out loud to no one in particular, “What does this all mean?” and a friendly fellow traveler explained the play on words.

Frog or kaeru has the same pronunciation as the Japanese word for return. So frogs, because of this lucky coincidence, are lucky. They represent the returning of things (family, friends, money), which have gone or have been given away, as well as people or things returning to their place of origin. A frog croaks and brings good luck to travelers.

I guess we have St. Christopher who continues to show up on dashboards even though he was defrocked years ago. I tend to think I am above the fray but I am reluctant to take the St. Christopher medal off my trawler’s pilothouse wall. Why tempt faith when you have someone, be it an inanimate object, so willing to help you navigate through life’s shoals.

Volume 5846 (4), 3/18/2011

22

February is hard to imagine in t-shirt and shorts. Its relentlessness is the rub. Once it gets going there is no stopping until spring and even then, it reluctantly succumbs to the earth’s precession.

February is the reason Florida exist. It is hunker down time. It is a time of strained backs and unexpected heart attacks. It is also inspiring. Inspiring northerners to work hard for southern condos, Caribbean cruises, hot tubs, theatre tickets and subscriptions of all types; and inspiring introspection.

And so, I sit at the kitchen table listening to the Hammond B-3 of Jack McDuff on the radio. I hear predictions of 22 inches of snow before the blizzard blows through sometime tomorrow afternoon. I notice from the corner of my eye that it’s 12:22 and that the adjacent outdoor thermometer reads 22 °F. I first think how lucky I am to be warm and cozy, and then I realize there it is again, 22.

Numerology is not my thing but this winter the number 22 is significant. Twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit has stared at me from my car’s thermometer for weeks on end. For so long I have become acclimatized to it.

As if on autopilot I shed my heavy winter coat for a lighter one, even though 22 °F still awaits me each morning. My blood has thickened. I am heartier. What would have killed me in July, I now find a mere inconvenience. I try to remember the physiology, but forget it and just enjoy my newfound warmth.

Twenty-two is a magical number this year. The second year that increased jet stream gyrations suck frigid Artic air into Texas and turn the warmth of the Gulf into feet of snow burying the eastern seaboard: gyrations that ruin many a vacation and freeze a state full of oranges.

I am skeptical of the weeklong build up to this storm, but in the end admit that it is a brilliant blizzard. There have only been a few in my lifetime. That is if you ignore the winter long blizzards of 1976, 77, and 78. Those inspired me (a mailman at the time) to go back to school and get off the street.

Today is 2/2/11. Ummm … two 2’s, and then two times eleven get you another twenty-two. Okay, I have to stop. I cannot have cabin fever yet. It has only been a few hours. I am sure I have at least 22 books to read and probably twenty two hundred songs to listen to. I must get to work entertaining myself, but then type 22 into Google. This is a mistake.

It is a number and a year. It is highways in Canada, America, India, Iran, Israel, Japan and Vietnam to name a few. It is a bus route in New Jersey and an episode of The Twilight Zone. 22 is a construct of the human mind, a mind that needs language to represent the physical and emotional world.

Recently in Japan it was pointed out to me that our 150-letter text message limit is a limitless 150 words in kanji. With 150 words another world can be created but I won’t today. I will lightly lunch and at 2:22 have a shot of espresso, suit up and go out to attack the approximately 22 inches of snow that has blown into much higher drifts. All the while dreaming that next February I will find myself somewhere that is 22 °C.

Volume 5842 (4), 2/18/2011

Sounds

1

It is seven-thirty in the morning a block south of Shinjuku Station in Tokyo and I am ordering a tall wet cappuccino at the local Starbucks. It is a bit more challenging than I thought. The “wet” does not translate, so I compromise—a good thing to do in a foreign country—and get a latte. My order is passed on in a singsong manner and I retreat to a corner to wait.

The drink requests get more and more complicated as people crowd in. I hear venti this and grande that, macchiatos and frappuccinos, and every other combination imaginable. In my pre-caffeinated stupor I listen to beautifully perky voices repeat the drink orders in one long aria.

An American businessman next to me winces when the choir hits its final high note and says, “It is really too early for this.” I think he probably drank too much sake last night, but keep it to myself. Starbucks at home will feel dour after this.

2

Three weeks fly by. I travel south and north, and south again across the vast city that is central Honshu. From Miyajima to Nikko I speed past cities, riverbeds, rice fields, factories and Fuji-san while enveloped in a mere whisper of sound. I pass through tunnels at 250 km/h with nothing more than a quiet whoosh.

While waiting in Utsunomiya for the MAX (an indescribable white, yellow and blue two story bullet train) to take me back to Tokyo I hear birds chirping. This is new. The only birds I have heard in Japan thus far are the large crows that rule the skies. I’ve been wondering where all the songbirds are hiding. But here, waiting for the shinkansen I find myself searching for the illusive birds I can hear but not see. They call to each other from across the station’s platforms. I fix my gaze on the rafters and see only speakers and realize that Japan’s sound engineers have synthesized these birds to keep me occupied.

Instinctively my shoulders relax and my heart rate slows. I take a deep breath and smile. It is another of the intriguing things that make Japan so interesting. Then the atmosphere abruptly changes. The birds are banished by a new escalating sound. I straighten up and pay attention, immediately aware of my environment and the task at hand: getting on the train in one minute or less.

Chirping birds morph into a dissonant ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong-ding that progressively becomes more frantic. Above the din a regal chime precedes a clear voice describing the route of the not yet visible train. As the train nears the station the sounds change to a rapid-fire high-pitched ping, but only for a few bars. The ding-dong remains, calmer now. I have been alerted, really warned, that the train will soon appear.

There is a short burst of pinging once the train is in sight. As the brakes squeal the ding-dong sets the pace for the orderly shift of people and goods. Thirty seconds into the transfer the ping restarts and does not relent until the doors close. The station’s conductor begins cajoling people to get where they are going and to do it now. Of course I am only speculating. I do not understand Japanese, but the meaning of these auditory clues seems universal.

The conductor makes one last visual check, turns a key and horns blare like half time at the United Center. The pinging’s volume ramps up—nothing can stop this train from leaving. There are multiples ahead and astern. It must move to keep the inexorable rhythm of modern Japan in step.

Suddenly, like Charles Ives’s Central Park in the Dark, all the sounds occur at once in a grand fanfare and it is over. Metal rolling on metal and the whirl of the electric engines that power this remarkable creation take center stage. For a short time visuals take over as the train accelerates towards its destination.

Only two riveting minutes have elapsed. Of course the infrastructure is impressive, but more so is the collaborative system that accomplishes such tasks. It takes guts, and dreams, to build this collection of sci-fi trains. I am humbled and think next time I will spring for a ride on the N700. The fastest train in the fleet!

Volume 5839 (4), 1/21/2011