08/08/08
Last night...
Sometimes cool heads prevail, sometimes the fortunes of the wind and tides help create our good luck...and beautiful things happen.
Category: Inner
Posted by: Vinnie
I spent the night sleeping on an uninhabited island the night before last. I had set off for an evening kitesurf and dropped my kite 3 miles from base while playing on a break. Got washed up onshore on a neighboring island and by the time I untangled my lines (3 hours, two of them in pitch black by fingertip feel) it was too late and not enough wind to launch (and dark, anyway)...
...so I hunkered down and walked through meter-high ferns with masses of brambles cutting into my ocean-softened feet...over rocks and finally to the nearest beach, in the lee of the island facing my little village a few miles across the lagoon....
The words from The Ancient Mariner went through my head as I focused on what needed to be done. Priority one was "keep my head dry" as I was beginning to shiver occasionally and the evening glow was only just beginning to fade into night-time cool. Next up was "make a bed" and "find some insulation" because my thin kite could keep the wind off but not the heat in.
By midnight I'd gathered enough grass and straw for a bed to insulate from the cold sand, and then more to make a makeshift covering that I used to insulate the inside of my kite. I hunkered down in my little nest and waited out the dawn. It rained twice, once lightly in the early early morning, and once hard around 3:30 am, but by and large it was an uneventful night. Some strange seabird noises every now and again kept me company and I thought back to the only sound of Nature I'd heard in those early days in London, the calls of the gulls, and how they'd kept me from sinking into the insanity of the place.
In the night sky the faint star halos gave way rhythmically to the reaching arms of light from the signals on nearby Round Island, and the longer, far-reaching beam from Bishop's Rock, scouting the night sky from far out to sea on the windward side of my little piece of sand and rock. It was the longest I'd ever spent in a wetsuit and it felt the longest, too! Definitely the first time I've bedded down in one...but can't say for sure it will be the last...I liked where I was.
I liked all of it, even my little tentative call of "Help!" into the lapping waters the evening before didn't sound convincing to me. It came across more like something I was expecting of someone in my situation, and I was reminded of the notion that struck me recently that most of the time in life we are interacting with other people not like or as who we really are, but how we anticipate, expect or feel that person expects us to be...behave...the desolate shore on which I'd washed up was at the same time beautiful, starkly and magnificently so, and the lack of human population since 1855 only made it more the right place to be, at the right time, for all the right reasons.
In isolation we are forced to confront ourselves. No more minefield of human insecurities to wade and stumble through that passes for social interaction in the 21st century, no excuses. Have issues with the cold, the thorns in your foot, hunger, thirst? How you react is entirely, 100% about you and your uncultivated, undisciplined reactions to life and living...no excuses, we are stripped bare to experience our selves. The night was wonderful, magical, not in a sense of exhilaration or excitement, but in the lack of it and the simple appreciation for the comforts I was enjoying right there and then, here and now...in light of how so many had washed up in horrendous conditions over previous centuries on this shore and on the hidden ledges and scrappy rocks dotting the archipelago in prior centuries, I was the living embodiment of a 21st Century Cakewalk...pure luxury to indulge in this without true, cutting, genuine fear of buying it at the same time...oh how safe, oh how safe...
I thought about the hot bath I was going to enjoy tomorrow. Brrr, cold...a shiver ran through at the thought of the cold swim that came before. Plan plan plan the morning: After the hot bath would come a massive breakfast (included in my hotel!) with all the trimmings. Then a long nap in a king-sized feather bed...it was a matter of waiting, and taking in what was here, now, to its fullest.
At 05:00 I poked my head out and saw it was light enough and low tide to boot ...hastily packed up my gear and set out for the mile-long swim back to my island. Lucky lucky me, the water was so low I could walk much of the way in chest-high water...finally made it OK wading through kelp and the crystal clear waters of the lagoon, captured inside the dawn all around and basking in the hands of this place I was at...reflecting on the experience of the prior evening and night, marooned, "ship wrecked", on an island in a group of islands that has seen more ship wrecks than any other place on earth (more than 900!!)...I got an inkling of what it must have been like for many of those survivors in the past, thankful for the wetsuit, the reasonably dry night, the lack of strong wind, the well-time spring tide, the waterproof kite, the bed of dune straw, the two bananas I'd eaten before my session, the bottle of water I'd had, too...
Safely back onshore on my home island I picked up my gear and walked back on paved paths to where I had left my bag the prior evening. Everything still where I left it, just a bit damp: Bag, gear, clothes, credit cards...there's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home Toto. Safe, lovely, beautiful, kind people, no pretensions...
As I pack up the gear a light rain shower passes across the lagoon and passes across to Samson where I'd spent my night. I'm looking forward to my hot shower, my big breakfast, the long king-sized nap I'm going to take and I'm thinking about my wonderful, night-long camp-out...skirt a longing look back over at Samson island ...and see a lovely rainbow dropping down on my sleeping place...it's been an interesting few days...
...so I hunkered down and walked through meter-high ferns with masses of brambles cutting into my ocean-softened feet...over rocks and finally to the nearest beach, in the lee of the island facing my little village a few miles across the lagoon....
...alone, alone, all alone
alone on a wide wide sea.
Water, water everywhere
and not a drop for me...
The words from The Ancient Mariner went through my head as I focused on what needed to be done. Priority one was "keep my head dry" as I was beginning to shiver occasionally and the evening glow was only just beginning to fade into night-time cool. Next up was "make a bed" and "find some insulation" because my thin kite could keep the wind off but not the heat in.
By midnight I'd gathered enough grass and straw for a bed to insulate from the cold sand, and then more to make a makeshift covering that I used to insulate the inside of my kite. I hunkered down in my little nest and waited out the dawn. It rained twice, once lightly in the early early morning, and once hard around 3:30 am, but by and large it was an uneventful night. Some strange seabird noises every now and again kept me company and I thought back to the only sound of Nature I'd heard in those early days in London, the calls of the gulls, and how they'd kept me from sinking into the insanity of the place.
In the night sky the faint star halos gave way rhythmically to the reaching arms of light from the signals on nearby Round Island, and the longer, far-reaching beam from Bishop's Rock, scouting the night sky from far out to sea on the windward side of my little piece of sand and rock. It was the longest I'd ever spent in a wetsuit and it felt the longest, too! Definitely the first time I've bedded down in one...but can't say for sure it will be the last...I liked where I was.
I liked all of it, even my little tentative call of "Help!" into the lapping waters the evening before didn't sound convincing to me. It came across more like something I was expecting of someone in my situation, and I was reminded of the notion that struck me recently that most of the time in life we are interacting with other people not like or as who we really are, but how we anticipate, expect or feel that person expects us to be...behave...the desolate shore on which I'd washed up was at the same time beautiful, starkly and magnificently so, and the lack of human population since 1855 only made it more the right place to be, at the right time, for all the right reasons.
In isolation we are forced to confront ourselves. No more minefield of human insecurities to wade and stumble through that passes for social interaction in the 21st century, no excuses. Have issues with the cold, the thorns in your foot, hunger, thirst? How you react is entirely, 100% about you and your uncultivated, undisciplined reactions to life and living...no excuses, we are stripped bare to experience our selves. The night was wonderful, magical, not in a sense of exhilaration or excitement, but in the lack of it and the simple appreciation for the comforts I was enjoying right there and then, here and now...in light of how so many had washed up in horrendous conditions over previous centuries on this shore and on the hidden ledges and scrappy rocks dotting the archipelago in prior centuries, I was the living embodiment of a 21st Century Cakewalk...pure luxury to indulge in this without true, cutting, genuine fear of buying it at the same time...oh how safe, oh how safe...
I thought about the hot bath I was going to enjoy tomorrow. Brrr, cold...a shiver ran through at the thought of the cold swim that came before. Plan plan plan the morning: After the hot bath would come a massive breakfast (included in my hotel!) with all the trimmings. Then a long nap in a king-sized feather bed...it was a matter of waiting, and taking in what was here, now, to its fullest.
At 05:00 I poked my head out and saw it was light enough and low tide to boot ...hastily packed up my gear and set out for the mile-long swim back to my island. Lucky lucky me, the water was so low I could walk much of the way in chest-high water...finally made it OK wading through kelp and the crystal clear waters of the lagoon, captured inside the dawn all around and basking in the hands of this place I was at...reflecting on the experience of the prior evening and night, marooned, "ship wrecked", on an island in a group of islands that has seen more ship wrecks than any other place on earth (more than 900!!)...I got an inkling of what it must have been like for many of those survivors in the past, thankful for the wetsuit, the reasonably dry night, the lack of strong wind, the well-time spring tide, the waterproof kite, the bed of dune straw, the two bananas I'd eaten before my session, the bottle of water I'd had, too...
Safely back onshore on my home island I picked up my gear and walked back on paved paths to where I had left my bag the prior evening. Everything still where I left it, just a bit damp: Bag, gear, clothes, credit cards...there's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home Toto. Safe, lovely, beautiful, kind people, no pretensions...
As I pack up the gear a light rain shower passes across the lagoon and passes across to Samson where I'd spent my night. I'm looking forward to my hot shower, my big breakfast, the long king-sized nap I'm going to take and I'm thinking about my wonderful, night-long camp-out...skirt a longing look back over at Samson island ...and see a lovely rainbow dropping down on my sleeping place...it's been an interesting few days...