The raven calls

Blue Fox Bay, Afognak Island, AK — 18-Jul-2023 — The raven call is deep, dark, and humorous. It is the mad joker. Oftentimes, there are groups of them calling back and forth. Today, in the cherry-fruit of this labyrinth of water we are in, a single Raven calls from the west end over a stand of trees. I can’t see him, just hear him, alone.

We feel like we’re far away from things here. We’re not. Boats pass by outside of our sight, not often but they do. We keep the radio on 24 hours a day to channel 16. Once a day, sometimes less, we hear chatter. Generally, too far away for us to hear all of it, and never both sides of it, just the Coast Guard asking for latitude and longitude and how they will get a vessel to the caller. Rarely, we will hear two vessels passing by calling to each other.

Yesterday, for the first time ever, we downloaded a weather report about the clouds. It has been so dark here that we wanted to learn whether will it stay dark forever? The report is, no, not always, but the light will not lift for an entire day, just whisps of sunlight passing overhead, perhaps with lessened humidity, enough to, perhaps, dry out the boat.

We’re intentionally not going far this year. We want to sit and decompress and relax. There are four of us in our house this year. In fact, there have been for the past two years. It’s full of tension as the two other inhabitants struggle to get out of where they are.

Jennifer and I are in different places in our lives, though our ages are not that different from one of our housemates. But, she will figure things out and will probably do better figuring them out when we are not there.

Flora, Jennifer’s daughter, is starting to blossom. She has spent the two years away from where she was and has started to figure out where she’s going next. We will see, but again, I think it’s best that we are not there while she figures these things out.

And for us? Yeah, it’s nice to sit in this cherry-fruit pool hidden from the weather and waves, where the solar panels generate enough electricity that we could be here forever — until we run out of food.

Sitting here alone, becalmed really, reading the books we have been, sitting quietly is something we really need. In years gone by we have always come and sat someplace, but haven’t really realized it because it has been on a dock waiting for parts to come or waiting for weather to pass. This year we’re not making long distances and it seems that almost everything is working without waiting for parts. So this year, we can sit and cook and eat and read, quietly.

We haven’t seen any animals this year. That’s a very strange thing: no bears walking along the beach flipping rocks; no foxes in groups yelping; very few eagles, none of them walking along the beach at low tide. Is it that because we’re here early this year? Normally this time of year we’re beating hell for leather trying to get somewhere. It’s 300 miles to Kodiak, and we are doing overnight passages to get there and overnight passages to get past there. This year, Kodiak is the end of the road. In fact, we’re only going that far to get fuel so we can get home again.

I’m wondering now, is this the type of vacation everyone else takes? Not pushing hell-bent for leather to get places that they’ve never been before, but instead going places where they have been before, or in the company of professionals who take all the risk out of it?

I’ve been here three different years, and it is taking some of the thrill away from it. This particular island, Afognak is someplace we have been before but it is so full of coves that we’re in coves we haven’t been to but it is someplace we’ve been before.

I find that I need to go someplace new, as does Jennifer. Is this something everyone does?

I try to make myself to be somehow different from the rest of the world, but I’m not. I try to push myself to go someplace that I have not been before, to sail to places where no one has been before, or at least where know no one I know has been.

We’ve started meeting blue water sailors, people who have gone to all of these places that we just read about, and that takes some of the thrill off of the new places we want to go to, and definitely tells us about the places crowded with yachts that we will not go to. And so for this year, places are quiet, healing, with Jennifer’s help, forbearance, and caring, to sit and ponder and perhaps try to get some other writing done. And write to you my dear friends because I need to explain things to someone.

There are two parallel trees at the west of this piece of water. When the tide is up later, or perhaps tomorrow, we’ll row over and take a look at them. They look like two stalks of asparagus sticking up, waiting. They grew for years, and then died. From here I can see they’re just past the tideline, meaning that the tide line shifted and saltwater came up invaded their roots and they died. What caused the tideline to shift? I wonder about the ’64 earthquake, or just slow erosion, but the tideline shifted and so they stand waiting for erosion to undermine them further until they fall into the water.

They have no consciousness, so they don’t wait with a consciousness. They’re just two dead trees that happened to be there, that were alive, and eventually both died and now just wait. I have consciousness, I won’t wait, but I will think about them.

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The day turned out to be picture perfect. The morning was cloudy, cold and wet, but as the day progressed, the clouds burned off and cumulus clouds dot the sky. Except, over our cherry-fruit piece of water: nothing, not one speck of shade over our boat. The air has dried and dries the inside of the boat. I’m supposed to be making bread, but just sitting out in the cockpit reading James Lee Burke, decompressing until I feel like who I was. I don’t know when that’ll be, but I’m prepared to wait.

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The raven did not return today. He’s not calling me, laughing with a hysterical caw. May be he’ll return tomorrow, or may be he’s gone.

The two trees stand and wait. High tide has just peaked, Jennifer reads the first of a series of books I have been urging her to read. I figure we have a week here before we the need to move on. May be more. Four weeks before we need to head back. If we go nowhere, we don’t need to visit Kodiak.