The Endless Immensity of the Sea

Thoughts of Mandy's:

Antoine de Saint-Exuperie is quoted as having said, “If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

Things along this trip do seem endless and immense, and it isn't hard to see how the early explorers and settlers thought it all could never end. Surely, when the streams seem to keep coming from the hills and mountains, one after the next when looking one direction off the boat, and the never-ending sea is all that exists when looking in the other, those people must have thought it would be inexhaustible. How could an ocean so immense ever run out of fish? How could endless hilltops of timber have all been felled? When imagining every islet run over with sea otters, how could the trappers have ever thought the playful little animals could be trapped to near extinction?

Yet every little settlement we pass has notes in our guidebooks about how it was once a bustling fish offloading dock up until the fisheries collapsed, or some similar story. Now most of these places have gone one of two directions. Either they are near ghost towns, or have learned how to harness tourism, mostly sport fishermen. Tahsis, where we are now, has a large, waterfront paved yard slowing being grown over by the evergreens. That yard was the sawmill that made this town. Now it is empty, quiet, fenced in, and derelict. Still, when we look off into the mountains surrounding the inlet into here, clearcut after clearcut is visible. Some seem to have been cut a few decades ago, and are filling in again. But some seem to have been cut in the last few years, the fresh brown scars of the landslides obvious to even an unseasoned looker. I wonder if the logs are just being processed elsewhere, or if there are too few left to keep so many places open, or if demand has just dropped and so fewer are being cut. I'm quite curious on the matter.

And I wonder if the local fishermen were angry when the sea otters were re-introduced a few decades ago. What do they think of the added competition searching for the dwindling fish population. And I wonder if the fish population had an unnatural surge a hundred years ago, when they sea otters were first harvested so fully. Without the otters preying on the salmon, did the salmon population boom, making the new commercial fisherman think there were always so many fish in this sea?

I think I'll keep my eyes open for some books about the natural resources of this land, and the changes that have occurred in the last few hundred years. I wonder, too, where it is headed.

There is time to think about these things when slowly passing through the beautiful narrow inlets of Vancouver Island. But when we're sailing in the open sea, there is time to think of none of that. Never have I had more fun sailing than when running downwind along the coastline of the Pacific Ocean, being pushed by the swells from behind. Every now and then a swell will break, just as it crosses under the stern of the boat, leaving the soft sizzling of millions of tiny air bubbles surfacing around us as the boat sinks back down into the trough of the swell. After a few more moments, the boat is at the peak of the next swell, being pushed along again. For my light little self, it take all of my body to keep the boat pointed where I intend it to go. At the end of my three-hour shift, all of my body is tired and wanting food, food, food. After food, then sleep. But it sure was fun!

Fun as it is, the trip under motor to this little village was a relief for my tired body. Moreso, even becuase a tiny hornet got the best of my right hand a few days ago. Apparently I have a mild allergic reacition to hornet stings, because my right hand, all the way through my elbow and up to my shoulder is sore from it.

...Exuperie was right about the motivation that the longing for the endless immensity of the sea can create. I can't imagine a crossing a boat this size, but the wanting to do it, possibly someday in a bigger boat, does keep me working while on this trip, always hoping we can make enough money to squeeze a lifestyle out of this. My work has nothing to do with sailing, but sailing has everything to do with motivating me to do the work!