Those lost at sea~

Those lost at sea~

The glass falls and in that time when it is falling it has found an uncertain freedom. It floats weightlessly to its destiny turning and tilting this way and that, measured only by the resistance of air. But when it reaches the pavement, its self is shattered, its continuity is no more. It explodes into a thousand pieces, mere remnants of what it once was. It is shattered. Its pieces are shattered. It is no more. It is a violent thing and a thing of great sadness.

I was on the searchlight. The night was as black as it ever could be. There was no surface to the water. No telling the night from the water. I caught her in my light. She floated in space, a black void of no dimensions. Her hair spread out from her like an angel, each strand floating to a different current. She was beautiful, and she was dead.

They had hit an iceberg and sank in twenty minutes. Time enough to make a mayday call and rope together some crab pot floats. There were five of them. The water, of course, was frigid. In another twenty minutes she was the first to die and float away, and her boyfriend shortly thereafter. They made the call at midnight. They had done a foolish thing. They had put the boat on “Iron-Mike” and went below to party, leaving the boat to steer itself. A course unguided is a course foolishly followed.

When the iceberg was struck and the boat sank they could see the lights of the boat still alight, below the berg, below the water. The survivors described it as an eerie ghostly thing. The survival time was rated at about 15 minutes or less unprotected in these waters. She made it to twenty and drifted away. Her boyfriend made it maybe 40 minutes and did the same. After finding and recovering her body it was perhaps another twenty minutes until we found the crab pot raft. “There’s people! I see people!” our engineering chief shouted. I quickly donned a wetsuit and was in the water, helping the first man into the litter that had been lowered over the side. He could not have lasted ten more minutes. He was that close to loss of any strength to hold on. Then the lady, who was in surprisingly good shape despite her heart condition. We got her on board. I thought my task was done. I was climbing back aboard when we realized there was another. A man. The husband of the lady with the heart condition. I quickly made my way back to the raft, really just a thing to hang onto, and retrieved him. He was lightly tied to the rope and unresponsive. We got him aboard and found him without heartbeat or breath. We worked to revive him but were unsuccessful. He was dead. We believe he had been dead less than thirty minutes. Perhaps we were in sight when he passed away. The surviving man said, “Do not believe that dying of exposure is like falling asleep, it is a painful thing. They moaned until they died.” It was 5:30am in the morning, if morning is what you can call 5:30am in Alaska. These people had been in the iceberg laden waters for 5 ½ hours.

The next morning, (when there was light), another 95’ patrol boat from St Petersburg and ours did expanding square searches of the area. They knew all the people, dead and alive involved. St Petersburg is a very small town, a village really. They found the remaining body, a man, and we transferred all to their boat. I will not describe my duties of tending to the bodies during the night. Suffice it to say it is strange to deal with the lifeless.

In Anacortes there is a cache. I only had the coordinates and the name for it. Nothing else. No size, no hint, no text. I went looking for it. It took me to a memorial for those lost at sea. I searched and searched and could not come up with it. It was not by the column, so I searched the nearby statue of a woman holding a baby looking out to sea. Her hair and dress taken by the wind. I search everywhere. Nearby people were watching me. I even reached up the statues dress from below looking for a micro. One old man got up in a huff and walked off. The cache was nowhere to be found. I did not have enough to go on. Only then did I really stop to look at what it was I was searching and the significance of it. It is a wonderfully done work of art. It captures so much. I thought of those searches in my past, of those I found, living and dead, and those loved ones they were connected to. There never were any that we did not find in one state or another… eventually. At least those loved ones had something returned to them. How difficult it must be if that were not so.

Thank God my searches are not so vital these days.

The Boundless Horizon

“Light is sweet and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun”
The warmth of day enters fully the heart that has passed through the shadows of winter.
The breath of heaven fills the body that is tested and found to be vital and sound.
No greater love hath a man than he who stands in honesty alone before his God.

So it was that I came to this place. A prairie of some expanse, upon a plateau where I stood alone and unseen by any other human being. This was the treasure of this place. Sure to be missed by others who wander through. Some would avoid the slight strain to get here. Others would come and pass through unseeing, unaware that here was the treasure; not at the place where they were told. But treasures are often not where they are placed. In seeking a treasure one may find truer treasures. The place where Providence has led you. The thingless gem. The unspoken word. The miracle hidden in the everyday.

I had come before and failed. I had come willing to swim the river, but upon seeing the river I was wise enough to know life and death, and there is a difference between the two. I tried again. I followed the paved paths of men and came close, but each way was blocked by fence or canal or dead end. I came a third time by the advice of another and found a way true and clear and full of adventure. I left the path when it was required and made my own way. One that was not the easiest but the clearest to me, and was rewarded by what I was brought to. This place. This wonderful expanse of light and warmth and presence. A presence of being. Alone, yet wrapped into the All. The greater Self of which I am but a grain of wheat in the wind, in an endless boundless field of wheat. Golden sea waves bending this way and that forever to the horizon, at the whim of where the warm winds wish to go.

Time Travellers

There are many mysteries of how we live our lives. Of what medium we swim in. Time and choice are tangled together. What I do here and now affects where it is I go and what I find. One choice will lead me one way, but surely some other choice would bring a different result. What is the nature of it all? Do all these strings of choice exist at once and always? If time exists as a string of multiple realities where each and every choice is made and has its own reality and ever exists, think of how it is. A tangled web of continuous branches crossing and re-crossing perhaps, certainly a complex thing that would boggle our minds, for every moment is a choice and a new path to endless other paths, ever divergent from itself, ever confused, ever existing, ever new, ever lost from true purpose.

But if time and choice are made as a linear thing, where choices are yet made endlessly and at every moment but only one line of choice exists (the one made) then it is a simple thing, a dynamic thing, leading to a true result even if that result simply be the path made. Then time is single dimensional and of a single reality.

Yet the question remains, does the past exist? The place where you and others have traveled? Or has it vanished like mists as if it never existed at all? A false memory? And only the 'now' exists, and only the 'now' ever has? Then time is a solid thing. Unchanging, unchanged. It is not at all dynamic. There are no choices. There is no future.

I think time is linear, a single dynamic reality of endless choices made and followed to where it leads. Where we pointed it. I think the past exists like a residue, an ingredient that flavors the present, and affects where we take the future. I think it is a dynamic world and there are lessons to be learned. It teaches us where to step. Which may be the better chosen path.

The residue of heros and fathers, mothers and sons. Builders and writers, philosophers and teachers. Past loves. All are contributions to the ingredients that make us what we are, and where we are bound. If we forget the ingredients of our lives and our world, the flavor will be lost. Our paths will become tangled and confused.

Life springs from the debris of the fall. Leaves upon the ground. New paths diverge from, but are built upon, the old. My child will make her own choices, but "is" because of other choices made. We are time travellers all. In part responsible for the future, in part a product of the past. There are paths to take and choices to be made. Make them with compassion and understanding, but make them with the hopeful optimism of a child.

Dancing with Whirlwinds

How we found an interesting thing and how I danced with the whirlwinds~


We are tiny creatures. Ants upon a landscape. One following the other across stone and earth. Clouds swirl about. Weather is a possibility. We hear rumbles. They sound like thunder, and that they may be. Off to the right is a sloping hill that falls off to a valley below. To the left, the same. We see but rock, earth, ice, and clouds. Ice on the mountain behind us. We are descending one of its flanks. It is called second Burroughs.

There is an anomaly in this Martian-like landscape. It is impossible to tell what it is from this distance. Metallic. It moves in the wind but is caught. Hung up by something. I go off trail and down slope to look at it. The others wait. It is a thing out of place here. It has been on a journey.

We had hiked up to the memorial to do “12 birds on the dome”. I’ve been here many times. I think Jon has been here before too. It is an awesome place. I want to take Jon on up to thirds Burroughs but we are unsure. I’ve been up here before during a lightning storm. We don’t want to get caught in that. We hear rumbles but are unsure if it is the glacier or advancing weather. We decide against. Too bad. Third Burroughs is an extraordinary place. A place worthy of ones ashes. I have been there before when weather was being born. It is the place where Burroughs becomes the trailing edge of Steamboat Prow. The rounded mountain sharpens into a knife edge. Green moist valley to the east, a direct drop to the glacier to the west. Rainier in front. It was here I stood with fog and mists lifting from the green valley and frigid air mass blasting up from the glacier. The point of their meeting was where I stood. Along this knife edge micro tornados were forming, like Whirling Dervishes, lining up, disappearing. And in these micro tornados snow formed and whirled and danced about me like spirits. They would engulf me and freeze me and spin away again. It was quite cold! And exciting. Imagine a dancing line of snow-whirlpools along this ridgeline including me in their happy existence. There was no snow anywhere else. Only here. You must go there someday.

While at Second Burroughs we lingered, enjoy the scenery and heard things on my FRS radio. They were having some sort of fair or something at Fort Lewis, and I was actually picking up conversation on my meek little radio. We were amazed at the tricks of radio reception. So what would be more unlikely than this?

I reached the object and it made me wonder. How did it get here? Than I looked the object over and I was shocked! A smile came over my face and I returned it up the slope to the others.

My E-Mail went something like this: “Dear Fort Lewis Fire Department. I have just returned from Second Burroughs on the North flanks of Mt Rainier. There, just off the ridge on the east slope at about 6000 feet or so we found one of your Mylar balloons with your Fire Department number on it. Evidently you were having an event and it escaped and made it’s way here to catch its string around a rock. Amazingly enough we could also hear your chatter on my little FRS radio. Hope you had a wonderful time.”

Sometimes…

Total Eclipse of the Sun

A most lovely place, and beautiful young lass, Druids and a story from the past~

A few years back my oldest brother, my mom, and I took a caching road trip to south central Washington. Quite frankly it was a wonderful experience. One of the peaks of the trip was a cache called the G-Spot in Goldendale. Perhaps you’ve done it. Big yellow flowers were in bloom everywhere on that hill. It was gorgeous. It made my favorites list. Very near the cache is an observatory. I had been there before. We came back that night to visit it and had a great time and was given special tours by the head ranger including his personal library. He took me out into the night and showed me his green laser pointer, and I let him use my infrared night vision binoculars. We hit it off well.

The next day we once again visited Stonehenge, as we have on many road trips since I was a kid. Not long after we were married I took my wife here. She stood there on that rock in a very strong wind in a pink dress. I took a slow shutter-speed photo of her. In the photo her blonde hair flows out from her, the ends blurred out. Her dress is a wonderful blur of color. Her body becomes a flame of pink light. I love that photo. I have no idea where it is.

Here at Stonehenge there is a puzzle cache. I’ve wanted to do it for some time. But being travelers, it is time we don’t have. But these stones bring back thoughts and memories. One is a great respect for Sam Hill. The other is of another memory. It is of a visit here by myself in the 70’s. Here is that story:

How I played the wallflower at a Druid dance~ How the sun did an unexpected thing~ and how there was a voice shouting in the wilderness

I do not recall the year it was, perhaps 1976 maybe 1978, there was to be a total eclipse of the Sun. There upon the once mighty Columbia, sitting high on a hill is a replica of Stonehenge. Nearly as mystical a setting as the original. It was here that the totality was to pass, and here that I knew I must be to view it.

I arrived in the early afternoon on the day before it was to occur. As I wandered about Stonehenge (a place that has always held a fascination for me since childhood) more and more people began arriving. Ah, but these were not ordinary people. They came in odd clothing, white robes mostly, erected small pinnacle shaped tents, kept to themselves, built small fires in front of their tents, performed odd motions about the fires with small objects. They appeared to be praying perhaps. I wasn’t going to ask. I tried to watch without staring, a difficult task. As night came on more and more small fires were lit, then a large fire inside Stonehenge itself. I decided to leave the comfort of my quarters (was it a tent or was I sleeping in the car?) to find out what the activity was. As I approached Stonehenge it was obvious that there were a great many people on hand. I could hardly see from behind them. There was, upon the altar stone many candles aglow, there was some sort of knife, and a skull of a ram, and other things I either could not then identify or recall now. Behind the altar stone was a priest of some kind, but not the type you would see in the pulpit of any church. He waved the knife about and chanted things, though I haven’t a clue what. Then before long everyone held hands in a circle inside the ring of Stonehenge and began singing and dancing back and forth. And what might it be they were singing? “All we are saying is give peace a chance”. I thought of joining in, but the crowd seemed a bit strange and I’m forever playing the wallflower.

The next day as the hour of totality approached the clouds threatened to ruin the show. The crowd that gathered was now a mix. Druids, a professor and his students, locals, others. The Professor had brought a prismatic device that displayed the partially covered sun into a couple dozen small images on a board when it showed from between clouds. Some druids had climbed up upon the henge-stones and began banging drums and symbols. The clouds parted and the sky and landscape began to grow dim, like through a pair of sunglasses. “Through the glass darkly” seemed to apply.

It was at this moment, at the moment just before totality, that the most amazing and unexpected thing occurred. The last of the suns light intensified and began to ripple across the landscape, across the stones of the Henge, across the ground, across us. It was a most incredible thing! Ripples, bands of light and dark, moving in unison over us and the stones. Then they switched off and a sort of night came on, and a cold wind arose to chill us. There above us in a darkened sky was a blazing ring of fire. How odd it looked to see a blazing ring of light where none should be. Below us in the river valley, the streetlights had come on in the small town below. We stood silent and awestruck, even the Druids, for the few minutes it lasted. Then the famous beads appeared signaling the approaching end of totality and the Druids banged their drums and launched fireworks from atop their perch. Things passed quickly now, the light seemed to come back quicker then it had left and everything was returning to normal.

Everyone was dispersing and across to dell, someone in a camper, someone with a bullhorn, called out “This event has been brought to you by God! The maker of Heaven and Earth.” A rather fit ending I thought.

Walter Cronkite

Regarding the passing of Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America; somehow his passing brings to mind the last and final pronouncment of the Oracle of Delphi in 361 CE after well over a thousand year of divine prophecy:

"Tell the king, the fair-wrought house has fallen.
No shelter has Apollo, nor sarcred laural leaves;
The fountains now are silent; the voice is stilled."

Fear and Loathing in Vantage

Fear and loathing in Vantage. How worries advance with age.


I’m at the end of a dusty dirt road high above the Columbia River. Rattlesnakes live here. My bike lies next to me. I’m looking for a cache. Half a mile back up a short hill is my car. I’m greatly distressed. I could hear the radiator boiling as I removed my bike. My transmission was making horrid grinding and gnashing sounds just before I reached where I parked. Pangs of despair waft over me.

On the bike ride down I watched for snakes but saw a hummingbird and a coyote. It is lovely country but my mind is elsewhere. I have a family that I am responsible for, a not-so-well paying job. A kid in college. Two more coming up. Two cars that are on their last legs. Things are too close to the edge. I can not afford problems.

I am high above the Columbia. Just over there, on the other side and upriver a bit I once climbed that coulee wall. That was over thirty years ago. I found my way up through the rock and sage and walked across those desert lands north. Ten miles, and ten miles back in a day. There were snake pits that bloomed with cactus flowers. Beautiful. I only saw one snake but worried a bit the whole way. I made my way to an abandoned home in a gulch that I had seen since childhood from the other side of the river. I couldn’t get close. It was engulfed in brush. I was young and single then.

Down there I remember when there was a bridge and the old townsite with a gas station, and a motel, before the dam was built. And before that a ferry ride on a cable ferry. On the east side and just north of the bridge we would stop and find arrowheads out among the river rock.

Once there were other people living here long before this country ever knew a European. They left ideas drawn on the rocks. Had a tool called a slave killer. Long before them there were forests of walnut, maple and gingko. There was a great upwelling of lava that formed this land, and a great flood which shaped it. Now the river runs still. The people are nearly gone. The town drowned. And gone is my youth. Trees turned to stone and dust.

I find the box and want nothing more than to go home. Entropy is not to be underestimated.