Being
a true tale of All Hallow’s Eve: in which a couple of tourists brave the wilds
of a desert island, become saltwater cowboys (for at least a few minutes) and
ride in the last great wild
horse roundup in the east


2012.10.15



The U.S. Mail is a time machine; I know, this
missive is a product of that warp in the space/time conundrum. Tammy sent me
this, when my original had fallen into that mysterious alternate universe where
odd socks and pens and coat hangers go; the true tale of how we once were
saltwater cowboys on Halloween. I can’t remember the exact year; it was long
ago, before Tammy had her own horse, when I had one of the string of beat up
blue trucks that carried me on adventures, before I strapped kayaks to my roof
to go to the islands. I had my own Wild Black Mare then, and an older patient
half-Arabian gelding. It was before I learned to scuba dive, and before I
learned that some Wild Black Mares had clouds of canvas and carried cannons. The
islands have shapeshifted in those years, the Hook has grown, the beach beyond
the parking lot has narrowed, and yet they are the same; wild places of wind and
moving sand and tide, endangered species like piping plovers (there are more
now) and Delmarva Fox Squirrels, vampiric hordes of bloodsucking saltmarsh
insects, migrating birds, and the thunder of uncloven hooves on sand. If you are
between the ages of Disney and young adult apocalyptic sci-fi, you likely have
read the story of the most famous denizen of these islands: Misty of
Chincoteague. Like Frankenstein, and Zorro, and Christopher Lee, she is a
classic, undimmed by time. Her hoofbeats still echo here, and we are following
them…



It had been One of Those Weeks. If I’d been a
comedian or filmmaker, I could have spun it into a great plot for a blockbuster
movie. I was neither, so I called my buddy Tammy and said “Let’s escape to the
islands.”


No, no, not those islands. Not the blue-green
pale-sand palm-fringed reef-ringed places where Johnny Depp left bootprints in
the sand, and sang “I’ve got a jar of dirrrrt!”. Nope. You might pack your
snorkeling gear, and you might get lucky and have ten feet of vis in the
shallows, but, hey, it’s October, and you haven’t bought that wetsuit yet. You’d
better pack some serious sleeping bags, winter coats, sunscreen, five or six
cans of nuclear fission powered bug spray, oh, and throw in the raincoat and the
swimsuit, and might as well bring the snorkel anyway, you never know, it is
October. Halloween to be exact.



We hit the road, driving south out of
Pennsylvania, in a beat up blue ’73 Chevy pickup truck, Beach Boys and Surfin’
USA (I kid you not) blasting on the radio (back when I had a truck with a radio
that worked). This was before the GPS, and I am topographically impaired. I’d
been driving to Chincoteague and Assateague (off the coasts of Maryland and
Virginia) since the truck was new, but that didn’t keep me from getting lost
half a dozen times, conversing like a mariner, in the concrete spaghetti that
had been growing like kudzu. It was 2am when we finally found the Hanna’s guest
house on Chincoteague.


We did not get up at the butt crack of dawn to
watch the sun rise gloriously out of the sea. We cranked the truck and ourselves
into some semblance of life somewhere just before noon, driving out of
Chincoteague to the big barrier island of Assateague. The big island, on a map,
or Google Earth, looks like a long lean dragon, its tail wrapped protectively
around the egg shape of Chincoteague. Both rise just barely out of the sea, and
the salt marsh surrounding them. Chincoteague is home to decoy carvers and gift
shops, art galleries and museums, bed and breakfasts, motels and a few limited
condos. There are places renting kayaks, bikes, scooters, scooter cars, and
those odd things that look like “the buggy with the fringe on top”, only they
are driven by two people pedaling them like bikes, while their, hopefully
lightweight, friends ride in the back. This works fine on a flat island, not so
much in a hilly place like PA. There are the cottages painted in seashell
colors, Payne’s Sea Treasures (an esoteric collection of found objects and
pirate booty), the crape myrtle (in at least six colors), the hibiscus, and the
thirty foot Viking. Bookshops, ice cream, salt water taffy, and the McDonalds at
the End of the Universe (the last thing you see as you leave the island). There
are also the World Famous Saltwater Cowboys. These are guys who have real jobs
the rest of the year (often as real watermen), but in Pony Penning Week, they
saddle up and become cowboys, rounding up the wild pony herds that have ranged
the islands since… since…


The legend says a Spanish galleon wrecked and
ponies spilled out in the storm, taking up residence on the islands. There are
lots of documented shipwrecks on that coast, it eats ships. The sandbars,
shapeshifting under wind and tide, snagged the unwary hull as it passed. Then
the waves broke up the ship. If you were lucky, you didn’t need the Assateague
Lifesaving Station to send out boats to rescue you. If you were really lucky,
you salvaged your stuff before the locals did. Some of those wrecks have
actually been Spanish galleons, and some of those carried horses. Colonists also
turned livestock loose on Assateague; it formed a natural pasture, fenced by the
sea. It also helped the humans avoid certain taxes and other inconveniences.
When they needed their stock (to use or sell) they simply staged a roundup. The
last sheep, and the last Wild Sheep Roundup ended sometime in the
19th century. The Wild
Pony Roundup, being more picturesque, continues today, documented colorfully in
Marguerite Henry’s famous Misty of
Chincoteaguebook. That happens the last Wednesday of
July, and the island lists slightly to port under the weight of the 40,000 or so
tourists (the normal population of the island is about a tenth of that).



This weekend, the islands were full of a
different kind of tourist; Assateague’s National Seashore, Wildlife Refuge, and
State Park (on the Maryland end) were full of migrating shorebirds; willets and
sanderlings and ruddy turnstones and ducks, geese, pelicans, 
blue herons, great egrets, snowy egrets, cattle egrets, hawks,
cormorants, eagles, marshhawks, osprey, warblers, songbirds, owls… We drove over
the causeway and through the woods past the lighthouse, winding past roadside
lagoons filled with fishing egrets, past the high marsh and its tree islands in
the distance. Saw a couple of whitetail deer (there are also sika here), birds,
birds, birds… nary a pony in sight.


That’s odd. Where are the ponies? You can usually
see them out in that part of the marsh, in those woods by that treeline. We
stared, searched; birds birds birds, deer, cowboys, birds, squirrel, birds,
birds…


Wait, cowboys?



I shoved the sputtering camperclad Chevy off the
road onto the berm, lept out and flagged down the two riders. One of my
unfulfilled fantasies was to gallop picturesquely down a beach… any beach, but
this was the one I was familiar with, and these two guys looked like they might
have some local knowledge.


The first rider pointed, “You can ride horses
down the road there, or anywhere the four wheel drives go.” There is a
four-wheel drive trail on part of the beach. The sand-pale buckskin Quarter
horse he was lounging on poked a friendly nose in my direction. “We’re not just
out ridin’, though, we’re on the
roundup.”


What roundup? That happens in July. You know, the
island sinking under the weight of 40,000 tourists. The auction. The World
Famous Swim Across the Channel at Slack Tide. People in trees and kayaks trying
to catch pics of something they’ve only read about.



“We round up the ponies in the spring too, for
shots and vetting and hoof-trimming and such. This roundup’s to catch the foals
we missed in July, get ‘em off the mares before winter.” Winter is not
particularly cold or snowclad here in Virginia’s east coast. A little powdered
sugar snow falls sometimes. The marsh grass and saltmeadow hay stills stands,
but it is lower in nutrition than typical horse fodder, hence the “swelly
bellies” on the ponies (the high salt content has something to do with it too).
A mare still caring for a foal this late in the year is risking her own
survival. The rider pointed up the road to the corral where the ponies are
penned in the July roundup. It looked like the entire Chincoteague Volunteer
Fire Department and every saltwater cowboy within fifty miles, with a stock
trailer and some horses, was parked there. We got some addresses for further
local knowledge (this was before I was I was part of the web) and went on up to
the pen.


A few dozen ponies; faded bays and sunburned
chestnuts, blondish palominos and sandy buckskins, most with the broad white
markings of Tobiano pintos. A variety of conformations; big-headed
straight-shouldered long-backed… a trace of Arabian…a dash of mustang… some
eleven hand Shetland types… some mustangs brought in from the west to replenish
the genetic stock… The original ponies were of Spanish descent, like the
Corollas, Bankers and Shacklefords of the Outer Banks. Or the Marsh Tackies and
Cracker Horses of the coasts farther south. Over the years, other blood has been
added to the civilized free range ponies of Assateague to make them more
salable. Few resemble their Colonial Spanish ancestors. The ponies on the north
end of Assateague (the Maryland part) are part of the park system, treated as
wildlife, and have less outside blood.


We digress for a moment.



Horse Color 101 for the Horse-impaired: Horses
have two color genes: red and black, and stuff that modifies those into a
red/yellow/black/blue/brown/golden/spotted/striped rainbow of weird. Points are
mane, tail and lower legs. Bay is brown with black points. Chestnut is any shade
of light to medium red-brown, and some colors like chocolate and liver, points
same color or lighter than the body. Diluting chestnut gives you palomino,
golden with white mane and tail. Diluting bay gets you buckskin, 
golden with black points. (Dun, which looks exactly like buckskin, and
some champagnes, which look exactly like palomino, are a whole ‘nother set of
genes.)  Diluting those farther
gets you cremello and perlino. “White” horses are usually grey (starts as a
normal horse color, then greys out like humans do as they age), except on
Assateague (greys are rare to non-existent), where white horses are actually
pintos with extremely small amounts of color (like a tiny bit on the head or
tail)… or perlinos or cremellos. Most of the ponies are of the Tobiano pinto
pattern (can be any color, it’s the pattern of white we’re talking about). It
looks nothing like a spotted dog or the cow that gave you your Ben and Jerry’s
Cherry Garcia.


We hung over the fence, contemplating the history
of the island, Spanish shipwrecks, Spanish Colonial horses, and color genetics.
And the fact that buckskins held up better under the beach sun than bays or
chestnuts (epic fade). We tried not to sound too much like tourists. Islands
have a character of their own, they are their own little worlds, insulated and
isolated from the Outside. There’s an iconic tale from New England about a guy
who was born on the ferry coming over to the island, he lived his entire life
there, and died there, and when he was buried, the townsfolk spoke of how
wonderful a person this Outsider was.


We tried not to sound too much like Outsiders,
even though we could never be anything
but.


After awhile, the buckskin mare’s owner moseyed
over and said, “If you think this herd’s nice, wait till you see the ones we
bring in tomorrow! Twice as many… three times as many. You know where the main
wildlife drive is? The one that goes by the goose ponds? There’s a service road
right on the left side of that, by the parking lot at the visitor’s center. Big
cattle gate there, just drive right on through, like you’re with the roundup.
Four, maybe five miles up that road is another corral. You’ll see the trailers,
just come on up.”


Whoot! We had an invitation to a local event from
the locals themselves! We had backstage passes! We were not Just
Tourists!


Sunday morning we woke at the butt crack of dawn,
drove the truck over to Assateague packed with a day’s worth of survival gear.
We found the visitor’s center, the service
road.


And a closed gate. We were not too surprised. It
had probably been closed behind the last Saltwater Cowboy truck hours ago,
before dawn. We pulled out sneakers, backpacks, stuffed them with extra warm
things, binoculars, Peterson’s Filed Guide to Eastern Birds, and several cans of
Deep Woods Off. We set bravely off into the
bush.


I had back packed on Assateague before, walking
five miles of sand with a fifty pound backpack is not a stroll on the boardwalk.
You’ll make about one mile an hour. Our packs were a little lighter this time… a
little. We were not faster.


The road cut through the center of the island,
longways. A very very long ways. On one side were the piney woods, with their
fox squirrels and deer and greenbriar and mosquitoes. On the other side was the
interdune area, the shrub zone, the occasional pond, and lots of mosquitoes.
Canada geese flew in formation, snow geese swept back and forth to water, there
were herons, umpteen kinds of gulls, terns, various sandpipers, brown pelicans
rowed overhead, looking like a line of pterodactyls. There were fox tracks in
the sand, the distant sound of a fox barking. The sun rose higher. The wind
slacked off. It began to feel like the familiar Assateague, the one from summer
beaches. The one where a beach umbrella and some cool waves are welcome. We
transferred the warm stuff from our backs to our packs. We counted birds, birds,
birds. Hauled out the binoculars and the field guide and identified an unusual
horned grebe. Birds birds birds, most migrating on the Atlantic Flyway. Most
using Assateague as an important roadside stop on their way to their winter
homes. We saw no ponies, they weren’t allowed in this part of the Refuge anyway,
they’d be farther north, near the corral. We paused, searching the horizon for
the glint of sun on metal, for the sight of the cowboys’ horse trailers.



Nothing. Nada.
Zilch.


Our feet began to complain. It occurred to me I
should have brought more water. A lot more water. I began to feel like Beau
Geste. Like those cartoons of people crawling across the desert. Wait, it is a
desert; it just happens to have an ocean on one side and a salt marsh on the
other.


Still no
  ponies.


Somewhere about the middle of the day, we came to
a barbed wire fence straight out of the Old West. We followed it, and it flowed,
prickly and straight, right up the center of the island. I knew there was a
fence at the state line between Maryland and where we were: Virginia. It was put
in somewhere after the Storm of ’62, when the island became a series of parks
and National Seashores, and the Chincoteague Fire Company’s herd was separated
from the herd on the Maryland side of the border.



What? Were we there? Had we missed the corral?
The state line was a very long way from the visitor’s center where we had
started. (I’ve hiked that too… really really looooooong way). We trudged
farther, following the fence. It probably had something to do with the ponies,
with fencing them in or out of a certain part of the island, so if we went far
enough we’d find them. Or we could go back and be complete
Frankenweenies.


Trudge trudge trudge. Wishing I had four legs.
Wishing I had some Gatorade. Wishing we’d meet those cowboys
now.


Then an alien sight in the beiges and sands and
faded greens of the Assateague bush; glint of sunlight on metal far off in the
dunes! I dove into my pack for Essential Survival Gear Item #2: binoculars. YES!
It was sun bouncing off horse trailers and trucks. Civilization! Hallelujah!
We’re saved!


We slogged up through the sand
and…


…nobody home. Nary a sweat-stained mud-brown
Quarter Horse. Nary a rubber-booted coveralled baseball-hatted Saltwater Cowboy.
I raised the binoculars again and scanned the horizon like Captain Kirk looking
for Klingons. Our fence went on up the island for a few hundred yards, then it
met another line of wire angling off towards the beach (to our right). There was
a big fat aluminum stock gate in the middle of that fence, and just beyond,
another kind of fence: a high wooden one. Inside, something seethed, mostly
hidden by candleberry and wax myrtle. We limped over to see the hundreds of
ponies they must have rounded up by now (they’re actually limited to keeping
about 150 on the island).


Half a dozen ponies dozed on their feet, snoozing
in the midday sun.


One lone Saltwater Cowboy was guarding
them.


“So… where’s the rest?” I
asked.


The man waved at the vast expanse of dune and
shrub zone. “Out there.”


A brief time check revealed that it was not
actually three days later… it only felt that way. We’d hiked four or five miles
over sand and got up at 6am. It was still morning, and the roundup was still
underway. We hung on the wooden fence, and considered the conformation and
probable lineage of the ponies before us, a sort of scraggly lot, like refugees
from a pirate film. We plied the guard with questions. We sounded a lot like
tourists. He replied to all this in the typically loquacious manner of
islanders, “Yep. Nope. Maybe.”


The sun rose higher, and began to walk down the
other side of the hot sky. We wondered if maybe we hadn’t seen enough ponies for
one trip, and should hike back and make use of the rest of our short weekend. We
wavered. We hesitated. We’d come a long way for something special, and we felt
like we’d found some of it, but…


We waited a bit more. Then a disturbance in the
force…or the forest… or the dunes on the fuzzy horizon. I squinted through the
binoculars. Down the long stretch of interdune sand and shrubbery came a bunch
of ponies, not precisely a thundering herd. In all my years of island
exploration, I’d never seen a Chincoteague Pony thunder anywhere. An energy
conserving, fly-swishing walk was what they mostly mustered. These were moving
at a brisk trot, ears radared in on the corral and its occupants, no pursuers in
sight. They came on, were deflected a bit eastward by the fence at the edge of
the Refuge. The guard opened the gate, and they trotted in.



Gradually, one by one, every half hour or so,
other small bands showed up. They came over the dunes, from the beach, or
sweeping down from the north and into the corral as if they knew where to go. As
the corral filled up with little bands (of stallions and their mares), the
number of stallions increased, and so did their tensions. There were no
screaming lunges and flying hooves, just a few lowered, snaky heads and baring
of teeth and scuttling out of the way.


We finally posted a guard at the gate to keep the
corralled ponies from running out as the new ones ran
in.


Me.


Whoot! Here I was, a horseman since I was a kid.
I’d read all those books, Marguerite Henry’s Misty of Chincoteague, the big
Album of Horses (where I first saw Wesley Dennis’ beautiful illustration of
Misty and read her story). I’d come here as a high-schooler with family and
friends, the last year Misty herself was still alive. I’d sketched her daughter
Stormy from life. I’d come back with a backpack and a tent. I’d come later with
a kayak and dive gear. This was a place out of a faerie tale, and I was
participating in the tale! I was helping with the
roundup!


Sort of.


I took the job seriously. Almost as seriously as
the little mare who used more moves than a champion cutting horse trying to get
past me. She didn’t. I wasn’t so lucky with the black and white pony who came
trotting up out of the dunes with a nice big herd of mares. She put the brakes
on right outside the corral, stared at us, and decided that’s as far as she was
going to go. With our Saltwater Cowboy back on guard, Tammy and I tried to
head’em off at the pass. The pinto flagged her tail and ditzed off into the
shrubbery. We circled around again, this time cutting off some of her herd. They
knew who the Leader was, ducked around us and galloped off into the brush
laughing. They soon came back and stood there, just out of range. Tammy had done
her marathon for the day and posted herself by the corral. I circled around
again, charging through shrubbery and loose sand and discovering what October on
Assateague really means.


It means everything has gone to seed, and all the
seeds have little sticky pokey things on them. Soon my sweatpants were covered
in little needly pointy things of enough sizes, shapes and varieties to keep a
field biologist occupied for months.


On the next round, I tried horse language; lower
something resembling a horse’s head (like your pack) and swing it back and forth
like a herd stallion snaking his head to drive his herd. They didn’t like my
accent and ducked around me, plunging off into the deepest darkest reaches of
the candleberry bush. Eventually the cowboy got tired of chuckling at the crazed
tourist and called me back to the corral. Those horses would come around
eventually if the darned tourists didn’t scare them
off.


I began to extract some of the sticky-pokies from
my pants. There were still plenty left when a vague moving blur appeared on the
horizon. I grabbed the binoculars (still around Tammy’s neck); there was a
heat-wavery line across the far dunes, snow geese…a flattish shrub-speckled
swath of interdune area… salt flats… an occasional patch of standing water… and
a blob of dark and white motion.


The moving blur resolved itself into ponies, a
horde of ponies and riders strung out in a line from bay to beach behind
them.


Then off to the left, the bayside, a cloud of
dust and nearer thunder. Around a bend in the stone road came a bright red
pickup, stake-bodied and coolered, with Chincoteague Fire Department emblazoned
on the side. Two photographers, like something out of a National Geographic
Special, clung to the roof, snapping frantically away with lenses the size of
NASA scopes. In front of them ran the ponies, a herd straight out of an old
western, galloping in a kaleidoscopic mob of bay and pinto and chestnut and
buckskin. Dust from the stone road followed them like a jet
trail.


The truck ground to a halt in front of the
corral, cowboys leapt off and began herding ponies. Outside ponies ran in,
inside ponies ran out, then they were chased in and some more ran out… then a
whole bunch ran out. Then down the island came the rest of the herd with the
riders behind them. Now there were ponies coming from everywhere, through the
candleberry and wax myrtle shrub, over the dunes from the beach, down the barbed
wire line at the edge of the Refuge. They poured into the corner created by the
two converging fencelines, and the riders tightened the knot around them like
fishermen closing a seine net.


One outrider paused at the edge of a pond on the
far side of the seething mass of ponies, framed against the candleberry and
myrtle. A big man who looked like he’d hauled nets most of his fifty or so
years, coveralled and baseball hatted on a big bulldog Quarter Horse who looked
like he’d been carved out of Sinepuxent Bay mud. Well-worn western saddle,
breastplate with the western style carvings lathered and mudded into obscurity,
frosting of salt-sweat on the horse’s shoulders. The saddle carried a drover’s
bullwhip for popping at ponies. There were assorted ropes and tie-downs around
the horse’s neck. Saddlebags and an extra jacket tied behind, a plain practical
blanket under the saddle. The horse stood with his ears radared in on the
proceedings in the corral, the man lounged as if he was in his easy chair with a
remote in his hands.


A thin line of riders continued to straggle in
from the north; a few typical mud-chestnut Quarter Horses, a lean leggy black
Thoroughbred type, two lean wiry dirt-colored Arabians. All sweaty and blown,
but their movement and eyes said they wouldn’t mind doing it again tomorrow. I
scanned over them with the binoculars, then zoomed back to the Black. He danced
down the road, jigging sideways, neck arched, practically breathing fire.



He was the Black Horse. Not the white horse of
the Lone Ranger or White Knight. Not the golden horse of Roy Rogers or the Sun
Hero. The Black carries the One Who Rides by Night; Zorro, Robin Hood, Batman
(if he had a horse), Han Solo… maybe Darth Vader. The Black Horse was the star
of my favorite childhood tales; Fury of Broken Wheel Ranch, the Black Stallion.
The privateers, defending our freedom in the War of 1812, had wicked swift and
agile schooners the British called “wild horses” (they basically thought we were
nuts sailing those things). Their hulls were usually black. And in Irish myth, a
trickster/shapeshifter called a pooka most often takes the form of a black
horse. The man on the Black was blue-jeaned and plaid-shirted, but he should
have been wearing a cape and a sword.


The ponies milled into the corral, jostling,
baring the occasional tooth to establish their place in the pecking order, then
they buried their faces in the thick dry grass in the corral. Tammy and I went
back to fence hanging, studying the ponies. This lot looked pretty much like the
one from yesterday, only there were more; more colors, more sizes, more shapes.
Most were in that large pony/small horse range, 13 or 14 hands (a hand is four
inches). They were hardy, solid and healthy, if a bit thin from their wild diet.
Most would be fine mounts. Many would be right at home in a showring.



The gate was closed, the cowponies parked, the
beer cans popped. The photographers wandered back and forth trying not to look
like they were taking pictures. The locals traded jokes and comments about this
year’s late foal crop. There were only half a dozen late foals, but that was
half a dozen mares who would be fine this winter. And, a good time was had by
all.


Presently the buckskin mare’s human came up to
see how the tourists were doing. He handed me the reins to his horse. “Here,
hold this would’ja?” I took this as a compliment, mere tourists don’t hold your
horse. A couple minutes later he came back within shouting range, “Hey, why
don’t you take her for a spin!”


I stared for a moment doing a great impersonation
of a large-mouthed bass. I was on Assateague and someone had just handed me a
horse.


WHOOT!


“Oh, what’s her
name?”


“Buck, ‘cause that’s what she does.” He gave me a
wicked little cowboy grin.


Oh yeah, cowboy humor. Hah hah. That means she’s
dead quiet. Or it’s trick or treat with the tourists. I climbed up, started down
the road. Buck was rather like a large couch that moved. She had that pleasant,
pragmatic pickup truck quality that Quarter Horses often have. It’s a working
breed, the original cowpony, and most of them have some sense. Her human shouted
something after me about staying on the road, so we didn’t fall into a swamp or
something. Some of the backwaters of Assateague are noted for, if not actual
quicksand, gooey, silted, detritus filled guts that are the next best thing to
it.


I got a hundred yards or so, and remembered
Tammy. Fooey.


I turned around and went back. “Um,” I waved
vaguely at Tammy, still aground. Someone handed her a horse. “Here, you can
ride, right?” She’s been riding with me since she was a medium sized kid. She’d
made her Dad stop at my house once, because she’d seen horses there and wanted
to learn about them. She stuck around and became a buddy, and a pretty good
horseman.


Well, at least on my nice patient Anglo-Arab
gelding.


The horse she had been handed was the Black
One.


“Now, “ the Black Horse Rider was saying, “be
careful, he has a light mouth.” Light, like airborne. And the curb bit on his
bridle had shanks the length of a nice trout. The curb works by leverage, so a
twitch of your finger on the reins translates to a heave-ho from Arnold
Schwarzeneger in his mouth. The bit was meant to be used one handed, on well
trained horses, buy people who basically thought about the direction they wanted
to go.


Tammy put a foot in the stirrup, touched the
saddle and the Black Horse spun around. He scuttled sideways, threw his head
skyward, hopped up and down a couple times, threw his head up and down some
more, dithered sideways the other way, like a crab escaping a hot pot. He did a
turn on the forehand and one on the rear, moonwalked and blew sideways like a
schooner in a high wind.


“Ah… ahhhhh…Teanna…
TEANNAWHATDOIDO?”


I’d ridden a few more years than her, about
thirty… on my own horses. On ones I’d trained, worked with, knew every twitch
and expression of. Ones I could take the bridle off of and still expect them to
behave. Getting on strange horses, especially ones that are trying to become
airborne, still fills me with trepidation. I had worked with some horses other
than my own, been a working student, taken lessons from a cowboy on the fine art
of hanging onto a barrel racing horse screaming around a turn at warp eleven,
leaning like a privateer in a ripping good
wind.


I was six hours from home with no medical
insurance, no helmet, in sweat pants and sneakers (never, ever ride in
sneakers), with a botanical collection of stickly pricklies up and down my legs,
and every cowboy within fifty miles
watching.


“Um. Let’s trade horses.” I
said.


The Black was 16.2 if he was an inch. My horses
were 14.2. That’s eight inches shorter at the withers. His rider must have been
6’3” and the stirrups hadn’t been changed in fifty years. I tried to change
them, the Black doing a square dance around me. I gave up after the tenth
dosey-doe. I hauled myself up, managing to land with the Black more or less
under me. I remembered the “light mouth” admonition, and let him dance instead
of trying to whoa him, which would have sent him skyward.



Now the botanical collection in my sweats made
itself apparent. I thought I had removed them, but they are persistent little
migrants, and had left the important pointy bits in my pants.



Yeah, OK, cattle look spooked in the lower forty,
let’s ride.


I got about fifty yards before I decided I would
have another go at the stirrups from hell. I bailed out in one piece, and while
the Black danced an Irish jig around me, I heaved, hauled, poked and conversed
like a mariner. The ancient stirrup leathers finally gave way, and I shortened
them as far as they would go. The test is to put your hand on the saddle, and
the stirrup should fit under your armpit. The Black was so tall I couldn’t reach
the saddle seat… and anyway, he was still doing circles at warp eleven. I hoped
I’d guessed right about the length.


That, of course, put the stirrups just out of
reach of my left foot, which needed to go in that stirrup so I could swing
myself up. I hopped, and the Black jigged, and somehow I found the stirrup and
landed in the saddle.


Off into the sunset.
Yee-hah!


(Don’t make me look bad in front of all these
watermen.)


That’s the thing about the Black Horse; he is
what he is. He is a Force of Nature. He is pure wild energy. He is the storm and
the wave and you either know how to ride that or you
don’t.


Or you get
  lucky.


We eased into the jigging trot he’d shown me
coming down the road earlier. There was no sign of immediate revolt, just coiled
energy suggesting he could maybe finish the Iditarod today. Maybe round up a
couple hundred more ponies. Maybe do the entire Pony Express route all by
himself. We jigged down the road to the north and the pricklies in my pants
rubbed themselves into obscurity. The wind came up from the sea, the gulls
wheeled and wailed overhead, a shining bay lay to the left, and beyond it all of
North America, the sun beginning to sail down the sky over it. I could probably
stay on, even if the Black took off. Even if I didn’t, the ground was all sand
and shrubbery. I let up on the reins, twitched a leg muscle, asking for a
canter. The Black leapt like an arrow from the bow, like a manic impala, all
long leggity strides that went up as much as forward. Buck fallumphed along
behind us in an easy rocking chair canter, Tammy yelling over the wind what a
great time she was having.


I kept one hand on the saddle horn, trying to
remember how I’d ridden those crazy barrel
  horses.


Good horsemen do not look at the ground. They
look out between their horses’ ears. Rider who look at ground likely to end up
there. I peeled my eyes off the sand and bush blurring by and saw snow geese.
Gulls, pelicans. Little things flew out of the bush. The bay gleamed like silver
to the west. Beach dunes rose on the east, castle walls protecting Assateague
from the devouring sea.  We flew
like birds on the wind. We were Heroes out to save the world from Impending
Doom. We were cowboys on the Last Roundup. The loose sand we’d been trudging
through all weekend had no more power over us. We were Horsed, we sailed over it
as easily as an osprey.


We would have eventually come to the fence at the
end of Virginia. Or run out of island altogether. We turned back before then,
reluctantly, before the locals sent out a posse in search of their
horses.


We ambled back. And right in the middle of our
road was a band of wild horses. I thought of all the tourist signs that say
things like “Do NOT feed or pet the wild horses, they kick and bite.” This is
mainly for the benefit of the horse-impaired, who tend to do stupid things like
put their three year old on top of an untrained wild stallion because he
happened to be mugging them for cookies. Still… bunch of wild ponies, and us
needing to go right through them. Would they choose to have a toothy discussion
with our horses? Would they kick as we passed? (My half-Arabian tended to kick
other horses who got too close, and once hit me instead).



“Sure. No problem.” Yeah, the herd leader would
probably have a discussion with the Black over right of way, or take off with
the Black following at warp eleven.


We rode through. They flowed aside like a bow
wave before a schooner, a hundred ponies swirling around us like a vast school
of tropical fish. The white patches of the pintos blurred the distinction
between one pony and the next. They thundered, even on sand a hundred ponies can
thunder, off toward the beach. The Black danced sideways, wanting to follow. The
ponies poured around again, back through the brush, to stand in front of the
corral. Some of the mares had foals in there and weren’t ready to leave. A
couple of the islanders noticed Tammy and I were the only ones still horsed and
yelled to us to “chase those ponies outta’ there!” There was some chuckling and
rib-poking at this, I think it’s called having fun with the
tourists.


We turned our horses and in our best tacky
western movie style yee-hahhed out across the interdune area. We swept back and
forth across the rear of the herd, ramming into wild pony rumps, diving and
dodging. The Black breathed fire again. The ponies dived into the shrubbery,
into the candleberry and wax myrtle; a green, thigh high sea with no bottom I
could see. We dived in after them, brush scraping at my knees, grabbing at my
stirrups. I gave the Black his head, pulled my toes in out of the brush. The
Black charged after the ponies with glee, his feet finding solid ground where my
eyes couldn’t see. Like a privateer roaring on a reach, cutting the waves, he
leaped up hidden sand swells, dived down into the troughs between them, splashed
through a shallow marsh, leapt up the bank on the other side, nearly
airborne.


Too soon the ponies were gone, over the dunes and
into the marsh and woods. Back to being wild things, living with the wind and
the sand and the stars.


At least until next spring, when the World Famous
Saltwater Cowboys ride again.



I handed the Black Horse back to his owner with a
big stupid grin and thanks.


“By the way, you never told me his
name.”


The answer couldn’t have been better if I’d made
it up; “Zorro,” he said.





The original tale was typewritten, well before I had a computer
with word processing capability. It has no date on it. Since I mention the
working student stint I did in 1987 or ‘88, I suspect this Halloween excursion
happened in the late 80s or early 90s. I don’t remember the cowboys’ names, but
I remember the horses, Buck and Zorro. Thanks to all of them for making this a
Halloween to remember.


 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 A creek or river has two directions: upriver or down. Easy to navigate. The
winding creeks, bays and marshes of the Chesapeake look, from the air, like a
tangled forest, Mirkwood perhaps. From the water, the view is of a circle of sea
and tree woven together like a mare's tail in a high wind.


I guess I should have stayed with the Vikings. But then I wouldn't have had
an adventure. And adventures are things you tell stories about after you survive
them.


It started at the butt crack of dawn, before it actually; me, in the dark,
zombieing around finding breakfast and the last things I needed to throw in my
buddy's Subaru with the boat gear. I don't do Butt Crack of Dawn. And I really
truly deeply loathe navigating the traffic on 83 south and anywhere near
Baltimore. So I rode shotgun and thought about sleep, but ended up with a big
fat coffee from a pit stop in Mary's land instead.


We headed south, along the western edge of the Chesapeake Bay (laregest
estuary in North America). Through Baltimore, still sleeping in the early
Saturday morning light, silvering its way around tall buildings, the Aquarium,
tall ship Constellation in the harbor. South, south with D.C. far off to the
west, up the Potomac. Our destination, a small farm in southern Maryland, lay
near the other end of the Potomac. There, in a slip at the end of Canoe Neck
Creek, off St. Clement's Bay, off the Potomac, lies a forty foot Viking Longship
called Sae Hrafn, (she's docked at the house of a guy who flies blimps, so the
Longship captain and the Blimp Captain live on the same road... really!).


The ship is owned by the Longship Company, a doughty crew of serious amateur
historians and reinactors fascinated by the Viking Age. We are computer wizards,
cinematographers, artists, writers, fixers of engines, retired Park Service, and
at least one rocket scientist (really; he works for NASA). If you show up for a
voyage (it's free, but donations always accepted) you'll probably find someone
wearing a T-shirt with Viking runes on it that say: if you can read this you are
a Viking, or "Viking World Tour" (in the style of rock concert T-shirts) with a
list of historical high points of Norse culture (often battles and raids). At
least half a dozen crew will be wearing Thor's hammers, and some of us may also
have the Nerf version of Mjolnir (from the Marvel Comics' Thor film) on our
desk.


We pull up to the crumbling tobacco barn, load ship's gear into trucks and
cars, drive down the long farm lane to where the land ends. We load the ship, I
load the kayak... in about the same amount of time. A 1-person crew has to have
all the safety/survival gear the big ship has, with less crew to load it. I have
food, water, canned coffee (all the necessities of life), first aid,
windbreaker, bilge pump, towline, more water, spare paddle, fins (to help me
swim back up onto the boat if I dump), camerabag, cell phone tucked into an
Otter drybox in my PFD pocket. I don diveskin (protection from sunburn and sea
nettles) and hat and river sandals and PFD, shoved the kayak down a short grass
slope into the cool waters of Canoe Neck Creek. Here the world is sandy bottom
(unless it's mucky silt), semi-saltmarsh (we're as far down the west side of the
Bay as Assateague Island is down the east coast), farms, wooded treelines,
scattered houses, and a few marinas out there, somewhere, where there is more
boat traffic.


The new crew (visitors on the ship for the first time) hear the articles read
(rules of the Ship), and get a demonstration of rowing commands. Frogging oars
and catching a crab have nothing to do with local wildlife. The new crew
includes a lady who grew up in Hawaii (who may or may not have had ancestors who
sailed there a thousand years ago), her husband (who may or may not have had
ancestors who sailed the North Atlantic a thousand years ago) and a charming
Halfling (our favorite moniker for children, a reference, of course, to the
beloved Hobbit). The ship is readied, the docklines undone, the crew sets oars
and Sae Hrafn (Sea Raven) slips out of the slip.


I back paddle, shooting video, some stills (easier to upload quickly, videos
require editing, a coherent storyline and music). We head out into the creek,
beating against a brisk 8-10 knot wind, singing sea chanties (the bawdier ones
are left behind as we have a Halfling aboard). I paddle rings around the ship,
literally. They are chugging along under oars at a pace that leave me drifting
in their wake, occasionally dipping a paddle into the drink. I can charge ahead,
turn around and get shots as they pass. Swing behind, and cross the stern firing
video from a camera (a Nikon Coolpix L100) rigged with a bit of aquarium hose
covered wire so I can hold it in my teeth and keep paddling. Aboard, Captain
Dave has the new HP Go Pro slung around Sae Hrafn's dragonwolf figurehead's neck
taking shots of the action aboard.


Out into the sun, bright silver glinting off ever choppier waves as the water
opens up before us. Most of the new crew fall into the rhythm of rowing, and
watch changes (so rowers can rest). I paddle, with no watch changes, but at a
slow enough pace (tracking the ship) to relax. The Halfling takes the Helm; a
tiller attached to a steerboard (hence the word "starboard"), the tiller carved
to look like a raven's head. Someone mentions that Blackistone Island (now known
as St. Clement's Island) lies ahead, there beyond the mouth of St. Clement's
Bay, and we should make for it. Our one Captain and Founder is Bruce
Blackistone, who seems to be related to the founders of the island. He is
aboard, and it seems proper for the Captain to visit his Ancestral Holdings. I
float in the ship's wake, swinging around shooting video, falling back to the
lee side of the ship (port, in this case), so as not to drift into the oarsmen.
The dim misty island stays dim and distant. They row, I paddle.


"Are we there yet?" no one says. We sing, we feel the wind, the chop dances
under our hulls. My bow shoots out of the water on oncoming waves. The camera is
high enough to not get wavesplash, the sun is shining, the wind is blowing, the
white gulls are crying...


...to the sea, to the sea, the white gulls are crying, the wind is blowing,
the white foam is flying. That's Legolas' song of the sea from J.R.R.Tolkien's
Lord of the Rings, perhaps my all time favorite bit of poetry, although it is
actually a sort of sad going away song. The rhythm is fine for rowing or
paddling, especially if you sing it in Elvish. Cormorants flap by, blue herons
stalk the edges of the water, an eagle flies overhead and vanishes into the
trees. The Elves would love this.


"Are we going to make landfall on the island?" I ask. I'm thinking I may have
had too much coffee for breakfast, and not enough potty breaks.


"Want to go scout ahead?" Since I can paddle considerably faster than they
can row, and have less stuff catching the ripping good headwind, it seems like a
good idea. I stuff the paddle in the water and shoot ahead. (Comparative Stuff
That Catches Wind 101: Me: me (the kayak has ridiculously low freeboard)...
Them: a few feet of freeboard, mast, rigging, manblocks, random boathooks spears
and axes, 40' hull, a dozen rowers, a sail furled on a yard, figurehead shaped
like a cross between a wolf and a dragon, tail high atop the sternpost, oars,
flags, cameras, the Captain's Chest, tiller, steerboard). For the
sailing-impaired: freeboard is how much of your boat sticks out of the water.



The sky is a still blue dome, spotted with sheep clouds and no chance of Thor
slaying frost giants with Mjolnir (no thunderstorms predicted). The wind is in
our faces kicking up waves. Still above, chaos below. A chart of the area shows
a sandy bottom varying in depth from foot-deep shoals to thirteen feet or so in
the channel. Wind blows the water, tide pulls it another direction, it bounces
off shoals, intersects with a powerboat wake, drops into the deep, ricochets off
riprap (the ubiquitous rock armour lining many shores, especially ones humans
have built stuff on, stuff they don't want washed out to sea when the sand
erodes). The waves rock, roll and collide, making a pattern like a horse
galloping over rough country in the dark. After awhile, my head is spinning
trying to keep up with the motion; not seasick, but kind of wishing it would all
just stand still for a minute. I focus up, on the non-moving horizon and the
motion under the hull starts to make sense again.


The ship is behind me now, a blit somewhere against a distant treeline. I
can't turn around to look; turning the nearly eighteen foot sea kayak is like
turning a truck... and while you're turning, waves are blasting you from all
angles, and at the height of the turn, blasting you dead broadside. Just turning
in the cockpit is a yoga maneuver, one best not done in bouncing waves... you're
likely to be twisted like a pretzel about the time you get a wayward broadside
and find yourself in the drink. So I paddle ahead, keeping an eye on the biggish
tree in the middle of St.Clements Island. I note the compass course as I start
away from the ship: the reciprocal heading is 210 (the direction I want to be
going on the way back). I actually learned to use a compass underwater; for our
dive test we had to navigate a triangle in about ten feet of visibility, and end
up back at our starting point.


Easy compared to navigating the Bay.


The low blueish line of trees that is Blackistone/Clements creeps closer. The
water to either side rolls away to the horizon. That must be the Chesapeake. I
think about turning around, to see where Sae Hrafn is. I think about turning
back; it's getting choppier and I am essentially alone. I have a whistle. I have
a cell phone. I soon learn that the primitive tech is far more useful. I eye the
beach; is that a dock? A ramp? Sand (easy to beach on)? Or riprap (impossible to
land on)?


The waves shift shape again, lower, reflecting waves bounce off the shore,
and the shallows beneath. I spot a dock, with guys fishing off it. I paddle up
and shout ahoy or something. They ignore me. I shout again, and ask if there's a
public landing. I get a blank look and something about their look and demeanor
suggests they might not speak English.


Now I know how Captain John Smith felt. He was the first Englishman to
explore the Chesapeake. He went in a small boat called a shallop (about the size
of Sae Hrafn) with a dozen or so guys, rowed and sailed into unknown territory.
He encountered people, but they did not share his language. He had a compass and
other navigational instruments, but had to make up his map as he went. He had no
support, no backup, just him and his crew. There's a spot on the modern map
called Stingray Point, not far from where we are rowing today; it's where Capt.
Smith saw a stingray in the shallows and ran it through with his sword. The ray
objected and stabbed Mr. Smith in return. The Goode Captain became so ill he
told his men to dig his grave... he managed to recover enough to have the ray
for dinner... and to go on to help create that Pocahontas myth.


I see sea nettles, but no stingrays. I do see a water taxi, and evidence that
Blackistone/Clements is now a tourist destination. I paddle under the dock in
some nice waves, yell something like "Ahoy the taxi!" and get someone who speaks
the same language. Yes, there is a boat ramp around the other side of the
island...and a potti.


The last thing I want to do at  this point ispaddle around an entire %$#^%$#^
island. I look at the island; not very large, actually. I'll just go around that
point and see whats there. I really gotta go.


I pass a picnic area. Something decidedly Park Pottyish. Riprap and nowhere
to land. I keep paddling. The waves shiftshape, flaten, rise, reflect, bounce
off the riprap. I turn the corner and LO! there is an actual sand beach. rising
above it are bushes and trees in Victorian fall colors; deep greens and browns
and burgundys and rusts. And rising above that is a white house with a cuppola
on top which is a Light.


I haul the boat up on the beach, then haul it up farther. The last thing I
want is to call 911 and explain that I am stranded on an island because I didn't
park the boat correctly. I find the potty. I take some pics of the lighthouse,
and somewhere in there I play phone tag with the crew of Sae Hrafn.


I'm hauling the kayak up higher on the empty beach when I hear the muffled
sound of the Star Wars theme. I crack open the Otter box in my PFD pocket and
see the call is from Dave. "Hello? HELLO?!?"


bzzzzzt... the phone calls vanishes into the ether. I hastily dry my hands on
the least wet thing I can find and poke through the phone menu to find which
Dave number that was (I am tech-impaired, so this took a minute). I call back,
he calls back, call drops, I call back.


I can see for miles across the flatness that is the lower Potomac land and
seascape. I can't imagine what's blocking a cell signal. I move up the steps to
the lighthouse and the phone rings again. "HELLO?!?!?"


We establish that I made it to the island, and they didn't. The other tall
ships in the Bay have backup engines for conditions where they can't sail. Even
then, they often are much less efficient under power, or in the case of the 1768
Schooner Sultana, buck and snort like recalcitrant Shetland Ponies because their
hulls were designed to fly before the wind, not plow into it. Sae Hrafn's backup
engine is the dozen or so rowers aboard (the longship, shaped like a big canoe,
is not built for any kind of engine). We are investigating the use of a push
boat (much like the push boats used by Skipjacks) in our (hah hah) copious free
time. The wind has shoved Sae Hrafn into a near standstill. Without forward
motion, you can't steer her; the steerboard doesn't have enough water flowing
past it to be effective. Then the wind grabs her and shoves her sideways. the
rowers try to counteract this by rowing more on one side or the other. In a
kayak, you instinctively counteract the force of the wind and the shove of waves
with an extra stroke, a harder stroke, a longer stroke. On the longship, you are
coordinating 8 to 12 rowers, shouting orders over the wind that's shoving you
into the marsh.


They wisely have decided to turn around and sail back.


I am half an hour ahead of them, I haven't eaten anything except a few
granola bars since breakfast at 6am. I've been paddling since noon, it's now
about 2:30. I know I can't catch them once they set sail (I have paced them
under sail, but I can't paddle faster than they can sail, or make up a half hour
lead). I need to eat, and then I'm making the voyage back alone. I have a
compass course, and I can see their sail when I get farther up the creek (though
they might have dropped it by then). I down a few quick bites and contemplate
resting on the beach for a bit... I'll have the wind behind me, surfing on the
waves, but it will still be rough, a rest would be good.


I don't waste much time. I take a few pics and video of the light and the
beach to prove I was there. I batten everything down in the 'yak, dryboxes,
drybags, stowed. I shove her out into the waves and hop in, popping the
sprayskirt around the cockpit. I paddle around the island to the midpoint where
I first approached, set my compass course, look up the creek from which we came
and...


...there are two creeks. Separated by a bit of land. Two long stretches of
water, bordered by treelines and agricultural land and scattered houses. No road
signs. No arrows pointing "this way to longship landing". Left creek or right
creek? I look at the compass again. Looks like left creek. Unless I'm at the
wrong point on the island. Does that look familiar? Can't tell. Water. Trees. I
head out into open water, to where it stretches away to the far misty blue blur
that might be distant trees or clouds on the edge of the world. I dance on the
waves, they sweep up behind me, yawing the 'yak right and left, even with the
rudder down. I shove on the paddle, the 'yak surges forward, surfing the waves
home.


Finally the treelines around the creeks grow greener, nearer. I check the
compass a few more times; it seems like I am on the right track.


Then the bright red triangle of a daymark appears in front if me. Really, I
don't remember that. I look at the compas. I twist around and look back at the
island. Yep, this makes sense, that looks like what I was paddling toward.


How could I have missed the osprey condo with the big bright red triangle on
it? I call Dave, and raise the ship. Just want to make sure I'm on the right
track before I paddle up the wrong creek. Dave and Bruce check the chart aboard
Sae Hrafn, Can't find the red daymark, number 2. No really, I'm sitting infront
of it, it's here. What? what was that again? The phone crackles like a joke in a
horror film. I hear mumbled sounds, then "Oh, here it is."


And I am totally up the wrong creek, with two paddles. And they are telling
me it's St. Patrick's creek I am in.. and that I should be in Canoe Neck, and
that's to the north. I look that way and all I see is a long unbroken treeline.
I am convinced I am either in the correct creek or I need to be in the one to
the far right (east). A conversation ensues while I try not to drop the cell
phone in the wrong creek and the guys on the ship check the chart again. Unable
to visualize what they're telling me, I finally agree to go up the creek and
look for a marina. They'll come find me.


What I don't know, is that I am actually in the mouth of St. Clements Bay,
the "creek" to the right (east) is Breton Bay and would put me somewhere on the
far side of the world if I paddled up it. St. Patrick's Creek is to my left
(west) and Canoe Neck just beyond it to the north. I can't see either one of
them. In the Chesapeake region, creeks, rivers and bays make stumpy tree shapes,
branches going out short and thick and twisty, then abruptly ending in marsh and
land. The land interweaving with this ends in gazillions of puzzling peninsulas
called "necks". I was looking at a series of "necks" which from that angle,
looked like one solid treeline.


Stealth ninja creeks.


I paddle up the broad chunk of whatever water I'm in, looking for a marina.
Farms, stray houses, fields, riprap, wooded shores falling into the water as the
sand under the trees' feet is eroded by wind and weather and tide, a random dock
here, a tied up boat there. Nothing like a marina with an address that someone
could drive to. I see a large, official (ie: non-houselike) building with a
sandy beach at its feet. I pull the boat up on the beach, start to hike up to
the building, now clearly i can see it is a quonsett hut, a big silver half
cylinder (farm? secret meth lab?) surrounded, in the back, by tall chain link
fence. I pause, turn and pull the boat up farther, then tie it to a tree.


The building is empty of life, except for two vehicles parked out front, It
looks like some sort of business, and a sign suggests farm. then from somewhere
in back coems a deep throated bark, more like a dragon cough, then a roar, then
more, and I consider two things: the guard dogs will bring humans who I can ask
the address of and if it's OK for my friends to pick me up here... or the dogs
will jump the fence... or the dogs are guarding a meth lab. OK, that's three
things. I run back to the beach and untie the boat, head out, very tired, into a
lowering sun and falling light on an empty river.


Then I see a sailboat, going downriver under engine power. I paddle out
toward it, wave vaguely. Shout. Finally blow my whistle. They look, slow, turn
and come alongside.


"Is there a marina around here somewhere?"


"No, you're in St. Clements Bay. No marinas."


I explain where I came from and that I am lost and looking for St Clements
Creek, no wait, Canoe Neck. It's been a long day.


"It's up there." One sailor points vaguely at the distant treeish haze.
Pause... "you want us to throw you a line?"


Sure. Absolutely. Two random guys on a boat, towing me some random place I
can't see. They could be pirates. Axe murderers. Drug dealers. But probably not.
There's a kind of law of the sea at work here. The kind of thing that causes
three kayakers to go up to a 60 foot catamaran they've passed at the same spot
hours before and ask if everything's OK, and find out they're stuck on a
sandbar, and offer to tow them off. We didn't hook the towline up to the 'yaks,
we used the cat's anchor to kedge them off the bar. Law of the sea. The guy
struggling with his jet ski in the middle of a thunderstorm on the banks of the
Susquehanna while I cowered in my van (Thor may be one of my favorite mythic
characters, but I really hate thunderstorms)... I jumped out and helped him with
his boat, even though I loathe jet skis.


I run up behind the sailboat, one guy ties a line off to the 'yak's bow, they
pay out 30 feet or so of line and start the diesel. "Don't worry, we won't put
her up on plane or anything..." Sailor humor. Sailboats don't plane, powerboats
plane. Kayaks would plane, for about two seconds before they did some rather
spectacular special effects. We don't plane, we chug along, the wind blowing the
diesel fumes sideways, the 'yak gliding along at an unnatural speed, the rudder
keeping her in line with the big boat.


Somewhwere in here, Star Wars rings out in muffled splendor from my PFD
pocket. I juggle the phone, the paddle (trying not to catch a crab with it as
I'm being towed)... "I, ah, hitched a ride"...


A few minutes later, they untie the line at Canoe Neck Creek. I invite them
to come play with Vikings, and I paddle up the creek looking for the third cove
on the right, and certain that I'm going to have a chart next time. 　


10 mile paddle. Mostly into the wind. Plus 1.6 mi up St. Clement's Bay to the
quonsett hut (farm/beach), towed to mouth of Canoe Neck Creek by sailboat.


St.Clement's is actually Saint Clements Island State Park.


I was in the mouth of St. Clement's Bay, not St. Patricks Creek (to the
left/west at that point), and needed to go up the Bay (north) to Canoe Neck
Creek. I went north as far as the quonsett hut place (visible on Google Earth,
1.6 mi north of the mouth of Canoe Neck Creek).


The two creeks I was looking at were actually St. Clements Bay and Breton
Bay. Indeed the water to the right (Breton Bay) would have been way wrong.


The course out of Canoe Neck to St. Clements Is. is a long sweeping curve;
there is no  point where it seems like you have made a sharp right turn to the
south. I was following the ship and shooting video, so I wasn't really paying
attention to the course.


Charts: never leave home without them. 


www.longshipco.org We need a few good
rowers...uh...sailors. No experience
necessary.