Swordwhale Walking: Illustration, scrivenings & photography

Smithsonian Magazine runs a series called "My Kind of Town" where you (briefly) sum up what a certain place means to you and why. It didn't take me long to realize my certain place was an ever-shape-shifting island at the edge of the world...

When I sat in my first sea kayak, I realized how much it was like the horses I had grown up on: both carry me on The Journey, respond to the rolling shape of land or water and the tilt of my body. Both have their own quirks and require some skill to ride.

There's a place at the edge of the world (or at least, the continental US) where horses and the sea meet: a set of sandy barrier islands, shapeshifting in wind and tide, just off the east coasts of Maryland and Virginia. Assateague is a long, protective dragon shape, the place of the wild things: National Seashore, state park, wildlife refuge. Chincoteague, a small round egg tucked inside Assateague's southern tail tip (the Virginia end), is home to watermen, craftsmen, artists, "saltwater cowboys", and the only wild horse roundup on the east coast.

Local legend claims the ponies swam ashore from a Spanish galleon loaded with treasure. Surely Spanish galleons, and hundreds of other ships wrecked on the shifting sandbars of these shores (a chart I saw marked sixty of the known ones; the beach is about forty miles long). Science and history say the ponies came from a more prosaic place: colonial livestock turned loose on a pasture fenced by the sea.

I've lugged a fifty pound backpack barefoot up Assateague's beaches, stood in Chincoteague's muddy marshes (shrimp bite nearly as hard as the infamous saltmarsh mosquitoes) to watch the annual swim of the ponies across the narrow channel between the islands. I've stood eye to eye with Misty and Stormy, of Marguerite Henry's famous kids' books; "Misty of Chincoteague", and "Stormy, Misty's Foal". But it was the kayak, galloping over the waves, that showed me the real islands; the little blue heron feeding yards from beach houses, the stingray the size of a stall door inches below my fins, the low-flying skimmer unzipping the dawn lagoon for tiny fish.

Here, you can chill on the beach, leap the waves, or dive below the "undertow" searching for that perfect whelk shell. Or, empty-handed, search the back streets for shell stands, where you plop your quarters into a can for the Perfect Whelk, collected by a local kid after winter storms. You can eat real oyster sandwiches, buy a handcarved canvasback decoy, or a signed print of a great egret. Or take your own photo of one, right from your car. You can buy a T-shirt from The Purple Pony that says (upside down) "if you can read this, please put me back on my horse". You can paddle up the channel at twilight in the company of dolphins, or shove your boat off the beach and wonder if there are sharks down there bigger than you (the fins turn out to be more dolphins). Here you can still climb a working lighthouse, or follow its flashing beacon at night, where you might hear the snort of a wild pony in, where else, Horse Marsh.

 

“To the sea, to the sea, the white gulls are crying
the wind is blowing, the white foam is flying...”

That's from my favorite song in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (Legolas' Song of the Sea, in which he  contracts a bad case of Sea Longing and waxes eloquent about sailing west to the land of his people). That's what paddling is about. What sailing is about. What walking along the shore is about. That feeling in that song, that ache for the feel of the waves and the cry of the gulls..

“west, west away! The round sun is falling,
grey ship, grey ship, do you hear them calling?”

Friday night, at work, I heard Credence Clearwater Revival's “Proud Mary” on the radio...
“Left a good job in the city,
Working for The Man every night and day,
And I never lost one minute of sleeping,
Worrying 'bout the way things might have been....
rollin', rollin', rollin' on the river...”

I had a rare two days, on a weekend, off in a row. I had planned to do a Longship Company voyage. Longship Sae Hrafn isn't quite docked on a fjord; it sits in a marina, on a creek, off the Patuxent River, off the Chesapeake Bay. It's a long row to the sea. Still, it's big enough water to assuage a bit of the Sea Longing.

I'd decided I didn't have enough funds to make the longship trip, much as I wanted to, and lacking funds to fill the Mighty Van Fearaf's dual fuel tanks, I opted for closer waters. I prefer big water, the open reaches of the Bay, Assateague Island, even chasing the longship around in my kayak is preferable to dodging rocks in a local creek. Saturday night, I had shown a kid the wonders of Pinchot Lake (and she had shown me a few critters I'd never paid attention to before). Sunday I wrote, I fed dogs, I helped a friend with a story. Late afternoon I freed myself and answered the call of the sea. Or, at least, the mighty river flowing to it.The Susquehanna River was designed for canoes and kayaks (or they were designed for it). It's shallow, rocky, unavigable by larger craft. Last century, a canal ran from Wrightsville to the top of the Bay at Havre deGrace. This century dams turn parts of the river into recreational lakes full of jet-skis, small sailboats, fishermen, and those floating party platforms called pontoon boats.

I called a few friends, but the spare boat, Finrod, remained lashed to the top of the van when I drove down to the river.

Just as well.
“Rolling, rolling, rolling on the river.”

I drove down to Long Level, popped into Shank's Mare, looking for a dry box that would actually fit my new camera. No dry boxes big enough, so I ended up with a deck bag. Between that and the food storage box (kind of a high tech ziplock) the camera should be safe, unless I wrecked or sank the 'yak.

I shoved out into warm water, a silver haze to the north, a WSW wind blowing off the western shore, but not very hard. Not hard enough to raise enough waves to warrant wearing a spray skirt. Not hard enough to put the rudder down (Makenuk's Fin has a flat bottom and weathercocks, broadside into the wind). I had nearly shoved the boat off the stony beach when I turned around and got the sprayskirt out of the van and stuffed it behind Makenuk's seat. I thought about the compass that I had left in the gear box, but didn't bother going back for it. I had already left an iconic bit of gear behind, at home; the Maori hook a kayaker buddy had given me. "Good luck for kayakers" or "protection while traveling over water" they will tell you. The Maoris are the native people of New Zealand (a favorite place for me, which, in film at least, has been Middle Earth, Narnia, and the setting for Whale Rider), part of the group of tribes called Polynesians, some of the world's best sailors and oceanic explorers. The hook (a small carving made of greenstone) symbolizes their connection with the sea. Mine has been to the bottom of the sea with me (on dives) and on many kayaking expeditions. It would have quite a story to tell.  

I think the river's about a mile across here, in the depths of Lake Clarke. On both sides are wooded hills, creeks trickling down over rocky beds. The far side has a stretch of treed islands and a long sandbar called Conejehola Flats. There you can spot waterfowl, eagles come to eat their fish, gulls hang out in the shallows, boaters pull up and wade, dogs and all. In the winter, it becomes a snow goose resort, the far shore white with thousands of birds.

“Rollin', rollin', rollin' on the river.....”

I paddled across over boat wakes, fresh rough ones as the boats passed, and the smoother echoes of wakes falling back into the rhythm of the river. Two boats hove into view, coming north; after pausing and waving them by in front of me, I saw the lead boat was a Coast Guard boat towing the second on a long line. Out of gas, or engine failure. “Hey!” I shouted cheerfully, waving my paddle, “get a paddle!”

“They don't make one big enough!”

I laughed. Kayaks never run out of gas. Unless I do. And I have a nice collection of granola bars in my gear.

“But I never saw the good side of the city,
Until I hitched a ride on a river boat queen. Rollin', rollin....”

I paddled across, rudder up, making slight corrections as Makenuk's Fin seemed to have a mind of its own about the current and slight hint of moving air. Gulls floated in the shallows near the islands, I pulled out a camera and shot gulls floating, gulls taking off, gulls in flight, blur gulls, gulls-who-flew-out-of-the-shot gulls, gulls not in focus at all because the camera had gone into Stupid Mode...

“If you come down to the river,
Bet you gonna find some people who live.”

A boat floated in the shallows. I knew it was shallow, that I had found the flats, because my paddle made a sudden and disconcerting noise as it hit bottom. I pulled up, got out and sank into the cool water. Which involved lying flat in two feet of water, trying not to let the boat drift off, because I'd forgotten the anchor. The boat dog swam in my direction; a cheerful black lab shape panting through the water until her owners called her back.

North the haze seemed to have gotten darker. I had checked the newspaper weather report, sunny, hot, humid, sticky, sunny, Augustish. No mention of afternoon showers or thunderstorms, not even a shadow of them.

The shadow in the north was darkening. Something rumbled there. My river sense is not as honed as the people who fish it, duck hunt it, or have summer cabins on the islands. The people who live on their pontoon boats in summer, who decorate their piece of riverfront property with tacky tiki torches and fake Polynesian huts. And lighthouses and mermaids and pelicans (the one bird that doesn't come to the river).

To paraphrase Spiderman; my river sense is tingling...

The sky had definitely grown a darker shade of silver, and I was hearing rumblings that weren't at all like the fireworks that had startled us on the lake the night before.

I glanced at the boat nearby, full of boys and dog and fishing poles. They weren't revving their engine and fleeing. I glanced north.

Rumble rumble rumble.

I turned and fled. I passed the fishing boat with the dog and called out something like, “hey, you hear that thunder?” I don't know if I was seeking a second opinion, or warning them that they should get off the river before all hell broke loose. I had been caught out a couple of times in storms; once, paddling through the Rock Garden in driving rain (thankfully no lightning, yet), and once, with a handful of other paddlers, cowered under a high bank and overhanging trees as a brief storm passed through Wrightsville. Once, on Chincoteague Bay, I watched as a huge thunderhead sailed up from Arkansas or Kansas or some other western place that spawns storms that require heroines to find Tin Men and ruby slippers to get back home. There was no place to go there; only salt marsh in all directions. Flat, muddy, wet salt marsh. Fortunately, a bit earlier, I had passed something that looked, disconcertingly like Polynesian huts in the middle of Chincoteague Bay. (What IS it with the thatched huts?). Peering through the modern spyglass of binoculars had revealed the duck blind to end all duck blinds; telephone pole sized pilings sunk into the bay floor, and a veritable palace built on top of it. I fled back to the Duck Blind of the Polynesian King, pulled my boat into the boat parking garage under it, climbed the ladder and watched through the custom plexiglass window as the storm swashed across the bay.

There are duck blinds on the Susquehanna, though not so elaborate. There just weren't any between me and either shore. I eyed the north, I eyed the distant blit that was Shank's Mare's parking lot (where Fearaf waited) on the far side of the world.

I paddled.

Hard. I slammed down the rudder and paddled, one eye checking the ever darkening north. I watched boats with engines speed by, headed upriver to marinas, or to more sheltered spots. I began to wish kayaks came with a backup engine, like the tall ships I know. I really began to wish I'd brought the compass. If the visibility went to zero, and I was struggling across a wind and rain lashed river, the only way to know what direction you are going is that compass. Going the wrong way might take you upriver, or back to the islands, or over the dam to the south. On big water you could end up five miles offshore. And the sprayskirt, I should have put that on before I started across the river; caught in a gale, the cockpit would soon be awash without the skirt, and a boat with only a few inches of water in it is ridiculously unstable.

Rumble, rumble rumble.

I inched my way across an endless river. One hand went numb, then the other. I thought about pausing to shake it out. I paddled. Then paused, shook the offending hand, paddled on.

Shank's Mare got larger, I could see the parking lot, the van, Finrod on top, a bright yellow lighthouse beacon. I heaved up onto a stony beach between rocks. A guy was folding an inflatable raft right where I needed to beach. I paused, suppressed any antisocial thoughts. He packed up his boat and I pulled in. I heaved the 'yak, heavy with gear for an extended paddle, over the stones and up the bank onto the grass.

RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE. Flash. Zotz!

I fled into the van, just as a guy on a jet ski pulled up. He bailed out, left the 'ski floating in a foot of water, tossed out a mushroom anchor on a string. Fled to the van nearby where a female significant other was waiting.

All hell broke loose. Wind roared down the river, bringing with it a wall of dark silver rain. Of air and water so intertwined you couldn't tell where one finished and the other began. The wild water horses tossed their manes, ran rampant and crashed on the stony beach. Makenuk's Fin sat safe on the grassy bank by the van. The little yellow jet ski tossed in the breaking waves. Beyond the 'ski, I could see a half dozen small boats still on the water, riding it out.

I'd had my longship trip short circuited, and the earlier one had been blown out by a storm. The Schooner Sultana voyage in May had been blown out. This was not my year for sunny voyages.

Grrrrrr. I was stuck in a stifling hot van with the windows closed and steaming up. What else was there to do but put the camera on the tripod and take some shots through the rain-splotted window, wiping the fog off with a towel. I watched the boats maneuvering for a safe position, the jet ski bobbing in the waves, the whitecaps on the river, the storm turning the air to a pewter maelstrom.

Somewhere in the middle of it, Jet-ski Guy ran out and tried to heave his boat farther up the beach.

I don't much like jet skis. I think they're a noisy, fossil fuel sucking affront to Nature and the Peace and Quiet I want when I paddle out here. They stir up silt and choke living things and all guys seem to do is scream around in mindless circles.

And I really really hate lightning. My mom's mom used to get all eight kids out of bed and make them sit up in the living room, during storms, just in case the house blew away or caught fire or something. I'm not much happier about large amounts of wild electricity anywhere near me.

“If you come down to the river,
Bet you gonna find some people who live.
You don't have to worry 'cause you have no money,
People on the river are happy to give.”

We're all sailors here, even if it's only the river, and our boats don't have sails. I ran out and grabbed hold of something and heaved. Slowly we inched it up the beach onto ground covered by less water. Then we fled to our respective vans.

It blew over. Flashing lights of Lake Clarke River Rescue went down the road behind us, then more flashing lights. They converged a few hundred yards downriver. I helped Jet-ski Guy heave his boat back into the water (“Be careful, don't hurt yourself.”), neither of us found the mushroom anchor; the anchor line had broken. He headed for his marina upriver. I shoved Makenuk's Fin back in the water, and ran into a guy fishing out of an Old Town recreational kayak; a short, tanklike kayak with a cockpit large enough to comfortably fish out of, and large enough to swallow half the sea. He'd holed up under a bridge downriver. The flashing lights, he said, were for a small boat that had capsized with six people aboard. Apparently they had flotation, PFDs and floating seat cushions, so hopefully they were ok. The boat had to be rescued with a barge with a crane.

I thought about what I'd have done if I'd had someone in the spare boat. Rainey could have powered Finrod across the river nearly as fast as my boat. Any other adults I would have invited would have been struggling. I had a tow line, which would speed them up, and me down. I could get in Finrod's other seat and two of us could paddle while we towed Makenuk's Fin. Or we could have left the Fin tied on one of the islands. Or we might have cowered under the trees on the islands. Caught in the middle of the river with a newbie in the spare boat would have been hairy. A compass in the spare boat would be good.

I paddled down a serene river, the storm vanishing into the deep blue south, occasional flashes of lightning still visible. A rainbow faded in, like a ghostly vision, then faded out. The sun turned the water to gold. I found the bridge Fish Guy had sheltered under, and the creek that flowed under it. I paddled up a clear, cold rocky creek till I ran out of water. I took pictures of the riffles where the navigable creek ended; the water made music, steam rose above the dark wooded hills like a tropical rainforest, leftover rain dripped off the trees, a big silver carp with golden fins flashed away from my paddle.

I turned and paddled upstream in the growing twilight. Pulled out near a couple sitting on the rocks by the river, watching the sunset paint the water different colors. We talked about kayaking;

“I can't swim.”

“Wear a PFD. Rent a sit-on at Shank's Mare, it's really great. Stay near shore." Know what direction the wind is blowing. Know where you can seek sanctuary. Read the weather reports, but be prepared.

Look for eagles, for three kinds of gulls, even if you can't catch them in focus. For green herons, night herons, blue herons, great egrets. For kingfishers making their ratchetbird call. For swallows swooping after bugs. For mayflies and dragonflies emerging from their childhood underwater. For cormorants with their beaks tiltes skyward. For the ever-changing light.

And don't forget your compass.

“Big wheel keep on turning,
Proud Mary keep on burning,
Rolling, rolling, rolling on the river.”

I've been reading a book (Carol Adrienne's "The Purpose of Your Life"), in which serendipity is discussed: those moments of wonderful "coincidence" which lead you farther along on the Journey.

I had two, rare, days in a row off. I shopped for dog biscuits, a portable hard drive (the desktop is making weird noises: I envision its guts imploding like a second Big Bang). I think about throwing a boat into the water. I think about a kid who wanted to go out on an adventure. I call.

"Hey, we were just thinking about you, in fact, Danielle mentioned that we should call you..."

 I heaved the spare boat out of the backyard and onto the roof of the mighty van Fearaf ("Wolf Spirit" in one of the Elvish languages of J.R.R. Tolkien). I heaved Finrod's (the spare boat: it's a blond and user friendly) gear boxes out of the basement where I had stowed them that morning (after sitting on the porch for a week). I got lost six times before I found Danielle's house (really really getting one of those dashboard GPS thingies).

She climbed in armed with a swimsuit (contrary to Inuit belief, kayaking is not a dry sport), a Tinkerbell fleece (works when wet), and shoes that weren't flip-flops. We set forth, took two wrong turns and finally found Pinchot Lake.

We launched into a grey lake, pockmarked with drizzle. In the opinion of the fishermen launching bass boats and jon boats, it would remain drizzle, not a thunderstorm or a mighty downpour. We set off up Beaver Creek in deepening twilight. No beavers appeared (they're crepuscular, so it was their time), perhaps the random splashing and zigzag course Danielle was setting scared them off. I'd put her in Makenuk's Fin, a seventeen and a half foot blue plastic Perception Sea Lion; a long, narrow sea kayak with a flat bottom and a rudder, sleek, efficient, fast. It turns like a tank. Finrod is a Mainstream Tango; a bright yellow sit-on-top, a bluff bowed beamy raft Huck Finn would have been proud of. You can load in kids, dogs, and dance on the gunnels. 

 Finrod vs Turtle; turtle wins.

Danielle glided alongside, then slightly ahead, then slightly behind, then into my side, bounced off, slid the other way, lurched, splashed...

She was doing pretty good for her first time in a real kayak. We threaded our way up Beaver Creek, searching for wood ducks, owls, beavers, deer coming down to the water. The geese and wood ducks would no longer be guarding nests. Wood duck nest boxes stood empty. Turtle rocks were devoid of turtles. "Where did they go?" She asked. I don't know where turtles go at night.

A kingfisher flashed out of the trees and fluttered down the bank, a flash of sky blue. The owls were silent. Often you can hear the barred owls calling from these woods: "whooo! Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you aaaaalllllll!" With my other headlamp in red LED mode, the eyes of fishing spiders glow like red gems from the banks, where they skate on the water's surface. Now I catch a few glimpses of faint green glows, like faerie fire.

We straggle back out of the Eurasian milfoil. Danielle has noted a sign at our put-in which shows a few spots along the lakeshore where we should "not fish or boat". A weevil has been introduced there to eat the invasive milfoil. We dutifully paddle around the spot in the dark, under the bridge, where we howl like wolves, the echoes bouncing off the concrete. Geese fly over, sounding like distant hounds. 

Out on the lake a big bird lifts off of the water, trailing long legs.

"Look, a heron." Danielle says.

I watch it lift, circle. It seems pale for a Great Blue Heron. It tilts and a wing reflects sky. A white wing. "Wow, that's a Great Egret!" I say. Not as common as the blues. I've forgotten my glasses, so the white flash of egret becomes a blur and vanishes. I think I see two, standing along the shoreline, flashes of white in the growing dark.

"Those are posts."

We drift down the night lake, Danielle discovering the zen of kayaking, and that it's much harder to paddle in a straight line than it looks. A flash of sparkly red appears over the treeline; fireworks (I learn later that the local stadium is having a celebration). We nearly trip over a Great Blue Heron, fishing on a rock. He and the rock are grey against grey, only Danielle's dive light illuminates him at the last minute. He lifts off with a startled graaaack!

We drift past the campground, and it smells like summer and hot dogs and marshmallows. Mysterious light glint through the trees; fires? Lanterns? Cars? Martians?

We poke along the edges of the lake. Bats perform an air show around us and we turn on our lights which attracts even more bugs for them. We find more fishing spiders. At least one becomes an unwelcome guest in Danielle's boat. I expound on the virtues of bats and spiders (they eat bugs). We pass along the wooded shore and another bird flies out. Danielle sees this one, I only hear the distinctive craack! of a Green Heron, higher pitched than the Great Blue's.

The water is perfectly still, our boats' bows wrinkle it in perfect V-shapes. The treelines are darkest black, the water pewter to match the sky. A flash lights the sky to the south.

"Is that lightning?"

"I think so."

"Maybe it's only more fireworks." I ponder the sky for a minute, then turn around. We drift back, in no hurry, but with one eye on the sky, and a couple of ears too. Past the campground smokefires, Danielle wobbling into me as she tries to navigate in the dark. She turns on the Mighty Ikelite Mini C dive light (a mini spotlight with an intense beam) and stabs the shrubbery with it, then the underwater realm of the weedbeds below us. We wander back to the dock, lit by a single pole light in that pinkie-orange sodium vapor color. We pull the boats up on the boat ramp, Danielle bails out and notices things under her feet. She shines the dive light into the few inches of water that still floats half the kayaks.

I come over and shine my tiny headlamp into the water beside her. There are crayfish, scuttling away. The flash of tiny minnows. The darker wriggle of something decidedly creepy.

"Baby catfish." She says with authority. I watch and find another wriggler. It pauses; sure enough, I can see the bright small eyes, the whiskers. She makes several attempts and finally catches one in her hand; it's golden, not like the very tiny catfish in the baby ball at the diving quarry, guarded by two parents. This is golden with dark edged fins and those miniature whiskers. She releases it and it wriggles away, bonelessly, totally unlike a normal minnow. We poke farther along the shore; find tiny water bugs, and bugs that don't belong in the water; walking sticks. We pull a bunch out of the lake, scooping them up on our hands, depositing them back on the grass. At least a few of them weren't even on the surface, they were swimming underwater!

Crayfish, large and small and smaller abound. More tiny catfish, minnows, snails. No frogs, I can never find frogs. I head downbeach, peer with my light into the grassier edges. A big grey shape comes into sight, lurking in a few inches of water, a branch behind it, its nose pointed toward shore. A footlong fish, motionless.

"It looks dead." I say.

"It's sleeping." Danielle asserts. She goes fishing with her aunt a lot. My experience with fish is from the other side of a dive mask.

"Dead." I'm really sure. "You can't see the eyes."

"They're closed."

"I don't think they can close their eyes." I say uncertainly.

"Sleeping." Danielle says, "poke it."

At this point the ick factor creeps in. Dead fish, bleargh. I pick up a twig, twiddle the water experimentally in front of the fish.

"See..." The fish explodes upward, outward and is gone.

"Told ya'"

We pack up the boats, her aunt shows up, wondering if we've drowned or something. No, you know how these things go. In a kayak, there is no cell phone. No Gameboy. No time. Just the zen of being in the moment, of taking notice of the flash of white of an egret's wing, of the voices of geese overhead, of what's in the drain holes under the bridge (spiders, and something that looks like bird nests), and of walking sticks who swim and carp who play dead.