Hauling Out

Friday morning is warm and sunny despite the wind. Saturday and Sunday look to be very cold. It's time to take Close Enough out of her element and into hibernation 'til April. I hate to lose the sense of autonomy that I get from being able to buzz back and forth to Matinicus, but I'd hate even more to shred expensive parts or seize the motor because it's full of ice.

The consolation is that here in my new neighborhood on North Haven, I'll be able to look out the back window and see her in of the two boatyards sandwiching our rental house. She'll be close enough to go visit.

It's also time because the wind, waves and temperatures have gone from occasional belligerence to a constantly foul temper, offering a pissed off bull ride like the one I took on Monday.

By Monday, after flogging my way through 5 days of taking up gear, landscaping, roofing and trying to catch up with tax collection business and car registrations, I sorely wished to see my family. I was sore everyplace from orthopedic abuse and the muscle confusion of changing physically demanding jobs 3 times in 5 days, but a lot more achy inside.

I raced the clock to finish up gathering things I'd need on the other side. This is an ongoing aggravation of having two home bases close enough to each other that one does not have to absolutely get everything this time around. Tools, electronic connector cables, clothes, a bike pump, mail, music gear- it all had to be rounded up and cargoed aboard.

The Matinicus Rock weather station had been phoning in 23 knots gusting to 26 or 7 all day long, and I was pretty teetery on whether to go at all, and kept waiting for the NOAA-promised slackening of the wind later in the day. I'd get a whole lot more teetery later.

Just as time is running out to make a decision because I do not want to be a greenhorn captain in a strange place in the dark when it's blowing 25, I get a call from a friend who needs me to do my tax collector job. I oblige. Then time is really running out, but I decide to try it anyway because 'I can always turn back, right?' I call my advisor who figures I'll be OK 'cause the wind is directly behind me on my course to Heron Neck Light.

As I head out on the 30 degree course, my boat surfs large, steep waves, seeming to skate on her keel and seeming about 7 feet taller than I remember. This is crazy, but kind of fun. And I'll get to see my family.

Yes, it's all fun 'til I see coolant spurting out of the hot tank line. Then the fun drains out of me even faster than the vital cooling fluid that's now soaking into my guitar case. Overheating is bad for my motor. I look at the fittings and hose and can't see where the leak is. I shut down in order to disconnect the hot tank, hoping that will stop the bleeding.

As Close Enough obligingly turns side-to in the suddenly intimidating wolf packs of December breakers, I feel a special loneliness, a quiet, a distance from family, home and safety. I focus and get the hoses both unplugged, and restart. Nope. Back I go. I'm not getting to my family tonight.

The waves are considerably more difficult to contend with going straight into them. I am the pale, scrawny musician kid thrown into a rugby game designed to distract me from my broken heart by breaking some of my ribs. Big gray-green rugby bullies, planting me on back side a couple of times, this loss of stability brought on by trying to talk on the radio and steer at the same time. It never occurred to me that that would be such a challenge.

The radio connects me with my salvors back on Matinicus. After a very slow and rolly trip back to the harbor, Clayton puts wrenches and screwdrivers to the problem forthwith.

I head home, miserable.

The next day was rough, too, but blowing from the north-northeast, so waves are much more manageable, and I'm soon in the lee of Vinalhaven. Still a bit of drip, but we'll catch up with that next spring.

Foy is extremely accommodating and agrees that today is probably the day. He'll skiff me out and guide Close Enough into the lift, onto a trailer and perch her on stands out back.

I guess it's time to haul out, if for no other reason, at least to not have those kinds of crossings for a while. Now on to other things. Getting to know my new surroundings. Scrounging for work. Staying warm. Recording a new album. Now I'm talking...

Mo Jo Risin' I Ain't

A wise woman taught me that a newspaper makes for a better start to the day. A fisherman she is, the newspaper being good for the skiff seat on soggy days.

I had an unceremonious Wednesday morning departure from North Haven around 7:40 or so. I'd dropped off a tote of survival items on the town float, taken the van back to the rental house and said goodbye to family for another trip to Matinicus.

The December 7 morning visuals were peculiarly uninviting on the Fox Islands Thoroughfare. (I'd have it be Thorofare without the "ugh" but that's my lowbrow thing). There was plenty of ugh to go around down there this morning, and the extra letters added no elegance. Soggy cardboard was donated into my skiff overnight. Every ripple, ferry ramp girder, treeline was the same shade of green gray. Probably my complexion as well, but I was spared from that as there's no flip-down or rearview mirror in my skiff or on Close Enough. Rain. December rain. Drismalness at all compass points. Newspaper is a good accessory today.

My 5th crossing started out well. I paddled down the Thoroughfare to Close Enough and loaded my survival tote bearing thick socks, laptop, sausages and other comforts. CE came right to life, anxious to run. I yanked my skiff up and into the boat, by which I mean I grabbed the bow and essentially laid down near horizontal until the contest of my weight, the skiff's weight, leverage and gravity resolved in favor of plopping the skiff onto the platform.

After cruising through the narrows and Hurricane Sound, I fortified with a cup of black tea. No hibiscus or goji berries or any other froof or flimble, just tea. From a steel thermos with no pictures on the casing. I got to the end of the Sound at Heron Neck lighthouse and decided not to use electronics to get me to Matinicus.

The vista was that of a wet gray sheet of cardboard like they use for the backers of pads of note paper. I had a vague recollection of the course I took to get to this point going the other way and added 180 degrees.

More importantly, and I kid you not, I went by feel. The twisted, rich vortex that is Matinicus gives off some kind of energy- enough to pull me and my boat back. Everything is harder, more intense. There must be some mineral deposit or confluence of ocean currents, magma, magnetic field or other force.

Here's the offer of proof: Yesterday, I was splitting spruce I'd cut on North Haven. Splitting by hand, that is. I've split a fair amount of Matinicus spruce. It is, as Captain John Griffin calls it, "chewy". That's a broad shouldered euphemism for what a scrawny guy has more profane names for, but essentially is dense, twisted, fibrous beyond belief and wicked hard to cleave with a maul.

I was frustrated Tuesday morning, having to choose between coming back to Matinicus to try and earn a few bucks, or seeing my kids' first concert on North Haven. I resolved in favor of the latter and took out my frustrations on the pile of spruce chunks. One time after the next, I handily cleaved pieces that, to my experienced eye, would've thwarted the maul on Matinicus in the first quarter inch or so. One stroke instead of 7, what's up with that? Pieces with branches sticking out. Crack! Thick trunk chunks. Whack! Maybe the wind blows harder and forces the plant to grow tougher.

Whatever the metaphysical, sprucified bullshit, this morning I was pretty sure where I was headed with only the most landubberly, muddle headed, middle aged conscious thought. 20 minutes or so past Heron Neck, I realized that what showed straight before the bow was an ever so slightly more gray wet cardboardy looking horizon than what lay to port and starboard. Aye, there's home, then.

As I dropped the skiff off in the harbor in anticipation of heading out to take up my last load of traps, the temperature felt to drop 20 degrees and the wind picked up a dozen knots. No matter. I'm getting this done today. Off I go and start coiling rope on the engine box, untying and picking traps, stacking them on the stern with firm instructions to "stay." Waves get gruffier. Green gets more dour. Traction ripples on waves get grabbier as wind agitates water. I'm alone a couple or three miles east northeast of the Zephyr Ledge marker.

Several hours of slogging culminate in 5 traps disobeying my directive. I stare. I curse people who have no fault to account for in this. I keep going. Then the last pair of traps of the season, setting in 30 fathoms, come aboard.

Since my first season, the end of lobstering always feels like the carny leaving town. Even though my rotator cuffs and trapeziuses are glad, the rest of me is sad. Even though I'm relieved, it is an end.

Jim Morrison, I am not. The end is not my friend. I'm relieved, yes. Gear is in the yard. My boat will be safe on land for the worst few months. I'll forget the smell of bait. Other priorities will move up on the stage. Connective tissue will get rest and stretching. The full moon won't keep me awake.

The future's uncertain and the end is always near. Maybe so.

Cold Green Rings of Fire

Fishing culture seems to involve a lot of what I'd call preemptive pessimism. It's the opposite of pride going before a fall. If you think and talk gloomy enough, things may go OK. Much of my worry on the boat doesn't end up coming to pass. Other misfortunes come as complete surprises. I'll experience both sides of this mental dance before day's out.

With all the rolling and tumbling of finishing up my first hauling season and moving the family to North Haven and trying to find work for the winter, I wasn't looking forward to arriving back on Matinicus. We've had many stresses and lots of accumulated emotional baggage. The departure from our home was hasty. Items were unplugged, yanked out from their spots. Holes in the arrangement of things in the house. Dust bunnies let loose and running wild. Dishes on the counter. Petrifying leftovers in the fridge. It was going to be a sad, hard landing.

I had lots of dread over getting work done, getting paid, putting an end to a less than lucrative first year on my own boat, another open ocean crossing, only my third. As with almost all my anxieties, this round evaporated as soon as I got going on a gray, rolly-polly journey through unfamiliar narrows. I loaded a few groceries and some clean hauling clothes into the puffin, paddled out, got the Cummins purring like a giant cast iron pussy-cat, and beat the ferry down the Fox Island Thoroughfare.

I came to the end of Hurricane Sound. As soon as I saw Matinicus gray and indistinct in the soggy cold distance, I got happy. Strange thing to make a guy's spirit rise so.

The crossing went well, and I got straight into taking up traps. I coiled rope by the mile, stacked pots on the boat and got them offloaded onto the wharf as it was getting dark. Pride going before a fall is a common mental note of caution for me lately- for good reason.

I was all pumped up from having gotten 3 boat loads of gear taken up instead of the two I hoped for. I was all set to keep the train rolling, loaded one batch into the pick up truck, backed between the log pile and an extremely cantankerous crab apple tree soon to get a severe pruning after it snatched a trap and dropped it on my front windshield. I unloaded, hopped back in the truck, all action, and snapped the ignition key off.

No problem, I'll get the other one since both pieces came out. Hmm. Not in the key place. Maybe it's at Tom and Ann's place since that's where the vehicle lived before. Not on the peg board. Or the junk drawer. A call to the mainland. A couple more checks. No luck. The extra keys will come out on a plane tomorrow.

I'm shut down from trucking traps way before I've cleaned up the big pile on the wharf that's right in everyone's way. Well all right, I'll get supper. It's late anyway.

The feral cat eating my kelp from my hauling bag and I both jump when we discover each other in MY kitchen. I leave the door open and invite the creature with much profanity to leave while I run an errand. Critter's been in my house and unable to get out judging by a couple of piles and a knocked over jar of paintbrushes from a windowsill. Critter also shredded my loaf of bread, preferring a couple of small bites from each slice instead of, say, taking one slice and leaving the rest for me.

The next day is all town tax paperwork catch-up. The keys arrive with dusk and I haul all the traps back home, stack them in the yard and bring back the wet coils of rope. The coils explode in green bioluminescence each time I pick one up or drop it on the ground. Dazzling and cool. What a privilege to see this spectacle. It's great to be home.

Feeling a little Bambi-ish

Thanksgiving is often celebrated in well-worn places. Familiar rooms. Walls that echo and floors that creak in patterns we've recorded deep in our memories. A sagging couch. The dining and card playing table. A storm door with its signature rattle when someone's coming in. Home.

I cooked this year's turkey in an electric oven I'd not seen a week earlier. We are in the midst of exploring, feeling our way about and enjoying a change of scenery on North Haven Island.

Leaving Matinicus for the winter is wrenching. I'm homesick. Kids are homesick. We had a lot of reasons for leaving, but it still drags hard. Short version: our asses were kicked by nearly 6 years in a challenging, isolated environment we had no real experience with.

North Haven is very nice. We've been welcomed into another unique island community. The kids start school tomorrow, Monday. On Tuesday, I'll leave bright and early, reversing last Tuesday's journey up Hurricane Sound and steaming across to Matinicus.

I have two hundred and some odd traps to take up. Taking up is always a grind. The season has been long and draining. The air is cold, the sea inevitably choppy. Sopping wet mounds of rope must be coiled. It is a grueling sequence where traps get untied, stacked on the boat, heaved onto the dock, lifted onto the pickup truck, unloaded and stacked in the yard.

I'll be away a while longer to finish up some work commitments and prepare the house on Matinicus for winter.

I have the feeling I always got before we moved there: if I'm not on Matinicus, it isn't there. Matinicus is a cruel lover and I miss her.

Between the move, the new place, traveling to my family's home in Bowdoinham for the holiday weekend, and preparing to head back to Matinicus I'm feeling a little Bambi-ish; four hooves going in four directions, all of me spinning around. Hunting season ended yesterday, though, so I should be OK.

Just Another Warning Light

I really needed to laugh. I really, really needed a laugh. "It's just another warning light, what's one more?" My sister had asked why the brake light stayed on as we drove to the grocery in my steadfast Ford Windstar. As we headed south on 95, I explained the recent history with this noble vessel, our family's only transportation. I could see the recall notices all trailing behind, fluttering to rest in the breakdown lane. So the brake light, joining the check engine and a rattling sounding like a loose cookie sheet fixed by one corner to the underside of the van sent us both into gales of laughter.

She understands. Not only the charms of the 2000 Windstar, but the charms of past due notices, unflattering mathematical projections for next month, waking in the night with the oil tank empty, the sense the Black Friday could only be a very pale shade of gray for shoppers of our liquidity, or perhaps more appropriately Further Into the Red Friday, fridges and cupboards that have a bit of an echo from time to time, sinking down in our collars whenever the words "financial" and "future" appear in the same sentence.

It's been a challenging few months. Challenging like Shackleton's guys finding South Georgia, only without all that British skill and stoicism. After a lot of agonizing, we've moved to North Haven island for the winter. I'm dreadfully homesick. I'm also pretty well wretching every time I try to figure out how we earn enough to get through the winter without losing our home on Matinicus, and, for me, without losing my beloved boat.

I never had even the slightest difficulty sleeping until recently. Now I have not the slightest difficulty waking up at 2:30 AM, my brain inventorying the vastness of our predicaments before the rest of me is fully conscious.

I must be an almost pathological optimist. I've done a lot of what I do best- music, law, fishing, and been a colossal financial flop all the way round. I still like what I do and the eccentric collection of work experience. I actually still like being myself, living my own way. You have to ignore a lot of warning lights on your dashboard to have that kind of outlook.

Adventure Books, The Crooked Path and Undeclared Bankruptcy

I've enjoyed reading of peril. On mountains, in boats, airplanes, being a Rolling Stone, rowing across the Atlantic, fiction, nonfiction- doesn't matter. Somewhere along the way, I got attached to risk myself, going from armchair adventure to the piss your pants what the hell am I doing?! kind of adventure. Odd for a spindly, late (really late) 40's guy.

True, I'm home at night. I'm working in a familiar area, with friends in boats not more than a mile or so away. It's still the Atlantic Ocean, though, 40 or so fathoms deep, way over my head. It's November. I'm inexperienced. I'm running a boat miles from shore.

Lisa has a yellow sticky note over her computer: "feel the fear and do it anyway." I have definitely felt the fear and lurched forward into the fearful place.

Inspirational yellow stickies aside, I want to talk about how low the lows and high the highs can be within 48 hours.

Yesterday at around 2:30 a.m., I was sitting in the living room, breaking down over financial and other stress. I more or less stayed up until it was time to go out to haul traps and try to get some grocery money. The previous day had begun with a $260 bite in the ass from a forgotten bill for gas that I only discovered when the stove wouldn't light for breakfast. That money was going to be groceries and the self esteem that comes from being able to provide them.

Fortunately, in spite of a less than inviting marine forecast, I got out aboard the boat and headed out to haul. The magic of that outing was not only that I got my grocery money back, but that the thrashing of the work aboard the boat matched the turmoil inside me perfectly. My soul was balanced in between, deeply satisfied by acting in the face of internal and external turbulence. Boat rolls up to buoy, swerves up and down and sideways on the chop, gaff the buoy, run the rope through the pulley and hauler, bring traps aboard. Tend them. Run them off. Yeah.

I said goodbye to my family and flew to town. I had not been to the mainland since the beginning of October, a month and a half earlier. That fact may explain some of my extreme black and white thinking minus the white parts. I sent groceries back on the 3:45 plane out to the island.

Today I had my annual refresher to keep my law license. I saw many friends. I was surprised by the wash of positive energy. These individuals obviously did not know what a train wreck I am, and I just as happy not to think about it myself for a few hours. I never really felt like a lawyer, like it was my career destination, though I spent a decade in Maine's courts. All the same, here I was surrounded by attorneys who have worked hard, been committed and accomplished something. The folks I caught up with seemed genuinely glad to see me and positive about my whacky life.

Therein lies the conundrum of the moment. What I see reflected back to me seems pretty cool. What I feel about my situation is often so chaotic and conflicted, desperate, reckless, irresponsible. In all the stress and isolation of this year on Matinicus, I've gotten to kicking myself pretty bad. I kind of like the outside-in view better. Maybe I should go with that.

After a windowless, fluorescent sit-a-thon listening to experts in real estate, environmental, corporate, municipal and ethics law, I headed up to Waterville to play some tunes for a retirement party for a couple of my Corrections colleagues. I had no idea how much I missed so many of them. Again, the DOC was not my career destination, and I often felt bad about being lazy and unfocused, but I sure did feel great seeing so many great people. Again, they all seemed so accepting and positive.

It took some courage to play the last song of the night, an offensive and expletive filled, but also well written original song, perfectly apropos to the moment. Many times, especially in front of groups of people, I'll bail on an a risky idea and regret it. Not so tonight. I think those fine friends really enjoyed the song. Looked like they were doubled over.

I could look at it that people are positive to me 'cause they don't know what a mess I am, or maybe they know better than I do that for all my wandering, my financial disasters and other ne'er-do-wellism, it's ok for all of us to be who we are. Crooked path, undeclared bankruptcy and all. That's the real adventure.

Taking Up

Yesterday was a cheatin' day. A dazzling bit of late summer misplaced in my favor into November. The day before? Same thing. When it's nice on the water, it is way too easy to think it will stay that way. 'I can keep hauling. I don't need to bring in my gear for the year. I'll just keep going indefinitely.' Easy thoughts to have on an easy day. In spite of all the seductive, mirage-ing, tempting-you-into-being out in a gale with ice forming on everything 'cause you waited too long type weather, I am taking up gear. It is time, no matter what the sunshine and soft air try to say to the contrary.

It was literally last week, Monday in fact, that I was still making up rope and taking gear out to deep water. These shore traps, though, are pretty well empty, and in very hard shape from the mauling they take over the course of a full season right up in the rocks. Getting these pots out of the mix makes it easier to concentrate my effort where it will do some good.

What a couple of months it has been since bringing Close Enough home from Rockland! I've handled this vessel without any serious mishaps and only a long running entertainment series of slow and graceless approaches to the lobster car for the benefit of other fishermen and the buyers. Many miles of new rope put together. Many traps patched and set out, some with years of vines, blackberry canes and other vegetation having grown in. Many days on the water- some hairy where I learn a lot, some tranquil where I just try to work.

The whole kaleidoscopic circus has to come lurching home soon. The silver blue warmth of today will turn suddenly to windblown ice crusted desolation. I'll take today.