The Call of Wind and Water
I was four or five years old. The X boat was heeling up in a brisk wind and heading in the opposite direction from our Minnesota cabin, which faced east in the bay along what was known as Bay Lake Shores. I think I began to cry, but I am not sure. Watching the cabin to the stern get smaller and smaller, I recall the fear that we were going to be lost forever on the great expanse of water known as Bay Lake. Kermit was at the tiller of the Wind Call, and he and his twin brother, my father, were enjoying the brisk wind. They were also amused at the anxiety it caused me, a tiny novice sailor standing on the floorboards and leaning upwind, trying as best I could to help keep the boat from turning over in the water.
Through the years, that old X took on its share of wind and water until it finally was left by the shed out back. Though it was my uncle’s, it was in some sense community property. It had withstood much rough handling, water fights between cousins, and brisk winds. Later, it would yield its place to a larger and more magnificent boat, a C scow. The scow’s canvas deck, varnished hull, and yellowed sail were put to good use exploring the coves and hidden extremities of the lake. Our favorite courses were trips around Malkerson’s Island and Church Island, which lay directly east of the cabin. The latter required careful navigation of the boat through narrows between the eastern tip of the island and the far shore of the lake. The wind there was always unpredictable.
When I was in seventh grade, my dad and I bought a kit for an. eight-foot sailing pram. We spent all winter assembling it, finally painting the hull red to contrast with a blue sprit rigged sail. We carried it on the top of the car a few short miles down to Lake Michigan, where it plied the waters of Wilmette Harbor. The nearby Skokie Lagoons were another frequented waterway. There were powerboats also. Uncle Ole owned an old green Scott outboard motor. Started with a rope and equipped with a simple choke adjustment and throttle, it was sometimes reliable but more often temperamental. The old green Scott on the transom of a bulky old wooden rowboat was my first experience with out board power. I distinctly recall the sound of that motor, especially the hiss of the air intake when the cover was off, as it often was. The extended family purchased an early 1950s Mercury of about 18 horsepower and put it on the transom of a 15 1/2 foot aluminum boat. It was powerful enough to ski behind, and fast for its day.
Bay Lake was home to many wonderful boats. A 1950s ChrisCraft was tied next door at Neil Davidson’s. When he cranked it up, he usually blew the carbon out of the engine, sending a deafening roar cascading half way around the lake. My dad cursed it. Bay Lake also had its share of varnished and classic wooden boats. My favorite was the blue Century, which I understand still cruises the lake.
Along with family and church, boats and water have been a part of the rhythm of my life. For years, that rhythm included summer Sunday afternoon walks from my grandmother’s Driftwood Lane house down to the Wilmette harbor three blocks away. It also included boat ownership. First, a tiny pram, later a Penguin, and even a family runabout. During my first year in college, my father acquired a Pearson Ensign. Finally, I thoroughly enjoyed our three-year ownership of a Bahama 30 (Islander) that was moored in Bellingham, Washington in the early 1980s. Not surprisingly, boats have been central to many of my dreams.
How curious it is, then, that God should have called me to serve three consecutive churches in virtually “dry and waterless” lands. Eastern South Dakota, Central Nebraska, and now the Front Range of Colorado. Though I maintain periodic contact with salt and fresh water and the boats that ply them, the truth is that the world of water and boats has become another world to me. The passion, the mystery, the yearning to cast off has almost died — a fact about which I feel ambivalent.
Living near the mountains in a city with wonderful and varied terrain has profoundly affected my psyche. Pikes Peak, which rises spectacularly less than 20 miles west of my office window, constantly beckons a glance or sometimes a steady stare. From the storm clouds that gather around its summit in the early summer, to the snow that by late spring finally covers the decaying granite, the mountain has become the new mystery. It is both a more distant and a more immediate relationship. It is immediate in that it is always there. It dominates the city, the horizon, and even factors in the weather. It is also distant. A couple of close-up experiences a year with the mountain itself seems to be sufficient for me. It is enough to know it is there and to observe from a distance its changing moods throughout the course of a day.
One day last summer, during a visit to my wife Doreen’s family, we walked onto the Washington State ferry at Anacortes and got off at Friday Harbor, San Juan Island. We had not been on the waters of the San Juan Islands for four or five years. To my relief, I found that the old sense of mystery and yearning was still there. It was not completely gone, though neglected and muted. But I am not yet sure what to do about it. I have suggested to Doreen that we establish a long-term goal of making Friday Harbor a place to establish a footing. We lack such a place now. My dad sold his interest at Bay Lake to his brother years ago, and I have not been back since. Life moves on. Not having a family cabin on the lake is both liberating and disorienting. No cabin to scrape, no boats to clean, no trees to trim, no requirement to visit one place time and again. Instead we have ranged in our travels from Bangkok to Ixtapa to Cabo San Lucas to Haiti to Halifax. I feel much more like a citizen of the planet, yet no place has become what Bay Lake was to me for the first two-thirds of my life. I do not think my children have such a place of dreams and longing, mystery and familiarity. We know about a lot of places, but no place really well. We have been guests in diverse cultures, but I feel more transient than rooted.
I want, but cannot afford, the best of both worlds. Far flung travel and a family place. I would love waterfront property in the San Juan Islands with a Valiant 40 in which to roam from Hood Canal to the Gulf of Alaska. Like an earlier dream of making ocean passage from New England to European waters before my family is grown and gone, this dream, too, will probably pass, unfulfilled.
But there are alternatives. A good friend let us use his Catalina 38 one year to sail from Waukegan to Makinack and to De Tour Village beyond. Two years later, we picked up the boat at Petoskey and returned it to Chicago. These cruises provided a fresh-water experience on Lakes Michigan and Huron unlike anything I had known sailing off Chicago. This summer, six college students, my co-staff member Todd Slechta, and I will be piloting a Morgan 46 through the waters of Puget Sound, visiting the wonderfully exotic ports of Victoria, Sucia Island, and Friday Harbor. It will be the third time I will share with midwest drylanders a part of myself I love and enjoy. Like my father, I have found satisfaction in the use of boats to extend hospitality. Those who go this summer may one day say, like others, that it was one of the best weeks of their lives.
Actually, I am fairly comfortable with the balance of the present. It is nice to know that the Morgan will not own me. It seems to me that boats have more of a tendency to own their owner than the other way around. I will be able to enjoy it for six days, and then walk away from it. Maybe this is the best of both worlds. In the world but not of the world!
Yet, deeper inside there is the nagging longing for “place.” A place with water and the watercraft that go with such a place. I no longer desperately need it, as I once did. Instead, I desire it in what is a different, perhaps more mature, manner. I dream of a place that connects with the rest of the world, a salt water place. A place both remote and immediate. Mysterious as Puget Sound when fogged in, yet somewhat known.