To the lonely sea and the sky

It's hard to adjust to the landlubber's life after being six months away at sea. I keep thinking this is only a port call, with sailing orders set in a day or two. I am strangely silent, uncomfortably formal and polite, withdrawn and taciturn: it's odd having to explain yourself after living half a year with shipmates who knew you more intimately than you yourself, who ate, drank, slept, breathed, watched, and endured the exact same boredom and adventures as you. Words, in the end, weren't even necessary, except to acknowledge orders or repeat back commands; only a simple look across a crowded bridge, and it was done.

There is the ceaseless watchfulness to break myself of. The unending hurry, the restlessness and impatience, the lack of time. It is particularly hard to let back in all the trivialities that so consume our daily lives back on the beach: car batteries and utility bills and noisy neighbors and church politics. All the domestic fluff you leave behind when you cast off lines. It all seems such vanity, such chasing after the wind.

But hardest, for me, is the confinement. For months it was just us, bobbing around in endless vastness of wind and sun and sea and sky. Every morning the sun crept above the horizon in the east; every evening, it slowly sank with ephemeral flash in the far west. Nights, the sky dripped with stars, the Milky Way reaching out with uncharacteristic brilliance and clarity. Below, the sea kept pushing, the dolphins diving under the hull and the flying fish scattering like spindrift before you. Day after day, in monotonous expanse. No buildings to hide the gathering clouds; no city lights to drown out the moon and planets, Jupiter overhead, red Mars consorting with blue Venus in the east, the moon rising cold and white and full.

I came back, and made for the hills, whence came my salvation, of sorts. The mountain paths of the Sierras climbed on and on ahead of me, one trail forking into the next. The untamed river rushed and curled and spread out lazily in the sun, over smooth, round stones. The air was fresh, bright, undimmed by smog. At night, the stars hung low. You could almost believe you had only to wake for the next firewatch, to share your adventures over coffee and hot cocoa, to sink slowly into quiet sleep and sweet dreams and wake before dawn with the birds' eager chirps.

Society, of course, waited at the bottom of the mountain, as it had crouched on the pier, eager, ravenous, ready to devour us with its pettiness. I do not want to speak or explain. Gossip bores me. Why are the windows up? Why are we sitting inside when the sun shines or the night calls? There are fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, fresh milk and cheese. Why are we eating, blindly, from drive-throughs? (Why is the rum always gone?!) What are all these rules, these laws, these restrictions and hierarchies? At sea, there is only the captain, imperious and imperial.

On our last day underway, a retired merchant marine captain, one of our "Tiger Cruise" guests, appeared wordlessly on the bridge while it was still dark to perch in the XO's chair and stand the morning 4-8 watch with us. He said little, just gazed out at the lightening sky and darkening waves and watched and listened and smiled.

I didn't ask why. No need.