Before I go...

My stomach tightens and churns.
I am going to sea.
I pull my hood over tangled hair, wrap my neck and feet with wool, pull on rubber deck boots and worn purple gloves.

My heart tingles and leaps.
I am going to sea.
I am in love with the idea, the action, the motion, the creatures, the deep dark mystery. I am elated and terrified. This happens each time I pack my sea bags and stumble down the dock. I imagine all those things you don’t want to imagine: the ship sinking in a storm; falling overboard on a night watch; knocked in the head by the boom; appendicitis 1000 miles out; fingers, arm, leg yanked off wrestling a line. These are things I should not think on, should not say or write lest they come true (knock on wood, spit over your shoulder, turn around three times).

Death follows me as flying fish skimming over the waves and swallows fluttering above the boom. That is why I sail. Not because I want to die, but because I want to live more fully, experience each breath with gratitude, savor each step on land or boat. I feel death’s whispers mingling with salty air and I respond with a quiet reevaluation of my life. What are my deepest longings? Who would I want to talk to as the ship was going down? What dreams have I neglected? What haven’t I done that I would like to do? Who are my people?

I have time out here to think and process and dream. Sometimes it hurts as scenes are played and replayed and no matter how much I try I can’t change the script. Sometimes I come up with ideas that make perfect sense 500 miles off shore but seem ludicrous back on land. Sometimes on dark nights I create strings of words and the stars help me garland the heavens with my stories.

I am a mere inch of fiberglass away from the dark and murky depths of the sea. I can feel her breath casting the boat over her back. I want to explore the depths of my own dark and murky soul, to meet her at the edge of dreams and tumble through the world together.

I don’t want to conquer mother ocean, or the wind, or death: it is not possible. I want to explore the things that frighten me down in my core because I know it will cause me to love them, the world, myself, more deeply than the deepest grains of sand at the bottom of the most remote canyons in the sea.

We motor into the river and the fear drops away. We raise the sails and I whoop in joy. I catch myself smiling and laughing and dancing across the deck. The wild dark waters swim across the hull and welcome us in a frothing confluence of salt and fresh. My belly is calm. My heart is light. With this movement forward, with this action of raising cloth to the wind, I find a piece of my wild self raised to the sky.


We have not left the river, we are not in danger yet, these waters are swirling but calm. On the ocean we will face bigger waves, bigger winds, bigger challenges, but we will be held by the seas that shake us. We will be exactly where we all need to be, reaching or close hauled or running on the perfect course, as crooked as our wind-dictated path may seem. Death will holler through the rigging during squalls and tuck us into our bunks, our eyes red and fluttering after four hours on watch.

Death and life, night and day will dance with the dolphins and whales off the bow. They will sing with us to the stars. They will steer us to the islands through our salty hands.

We will be wild, we will be peace, we will be alive as we are cradled in all that is and was and will be.