Remorseless Calm: Seeking The Mystery

We all have our own methods of seeking out the mysteries of who we are. For me, this was it: a lull, preying upon all my fears. In the last ten days our ship had gone fifteen miles in the wrong direction. Poor winds had been blowing from the west, not the east. Then, they stopped altogether. I’d finally come to experience what mariners have for centuries called the doldrums.

Remorseless calm is a better way to put it.


Sailing upon an ancient vessel nearly 1,500 miles of the coast of Chile, I’d received some troubling news from home on what is the bane of all modern adventures: a satellite telephone. Someone had obviously not been told never to give the number to the wife of a crew member! My wife, understandably so, was – to put it mildly – angry. I was four weeks past due on returning home. With 1,500 miles to go it looked like it could be at least another four.

As a mountaineer on this sailing expedition I was a fish out of water. I’d descended thousands of feet through blizzards, across loaded avalanche slopes, over tenuous snow bridges, through the darkness with fading headlamp batteries. But, at least on a mountain, there is some sense that fate rests in one’s own hands. Out on the featureless ocean, our salvation appeared to rest purely on the mercy of the winds, the currents, the gods.

Alone, late one night at the helm during my nightly 2-to-4 am steering shift, I stood witness, if only briefly, to the mystery, allowing me if but a momentary glimpse into who I am. 2:30 am: the crew fast asleep; the rhythmic creaking of ropes lashed tightly around wooden posts; a living green phosphorescence trailing from the rudder, a blanket of a billion stars glowing brilliantly in an endless black coffee sky.

I was a million miles from home: the feeling of aloneness and silence was at once overwhelming and exhilarating.

Then overhead, a bright object catches my eye. Moving steadily through the stars I assume it’s a satellite. A longer look: too bright. The International Space Station: upon it, two lonely Americans and one Russian. Stranded since the Columbia shuttle disaster two months before, they rely on dwindling rations, and the small consolation of a Russian evacuation capsule attached for emergency use only.

Myself stranded upon this ancient ship of reeds, I sense a kinship with the astronauts as they glide overhead, intersecting with my path at this exact point in time. Our common isolation reveals a satisfaction that we must accept whatever may come our way, good or bad. We have put our fate on the line, yes. But, we have knowingly followed the path of our own making.

Further, in the powerlessness of random circumstance shines a satisfaction that we are, ironically, in complete control.