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| Moonset on Denali just before dawn December 29, 2020. |
The common knowledge is Internet posts with a picture get more hits than simple words. Let's see if it's true. That picture has nothing to do with what's below. It only stands out as the only time I have seen Denali since I came out here almost three weeks ago, so I am sharing it. (It's also pretty obvious I need to relearn my camera.
Memories are made of this:
As I’ve grown older, I’ve found there are lots of pundits out there willing to advise me or let me know what’s coming. Each of them thinks he or she is the only one who knows this stuff or is telling me something the writer just discovered. One thread that runs through most of them is the admonishment to get rid of your stuff, your kids don’t want it. With my life in such flux this past year, I took that one to heart. I still managed to fill one of U-Haul’s larger storage units and that doesn’t count what’s in this cabin
So, today in the process of a different chore I came across my collection of nautical charts. Earlier I had tried to sell them, no takers. I tried to give them away, still no takers. Mind you this is easily more than a thousand dollars’ worth of charts, covering most of the west North American coast from Seattle to the outer Aleutians, many of them laminated thanks to the generosity of a skipper from the Gulf of Mexico who didn’t expect to return to Alaska after the first summer of the Exxon Valdez spill cleanup efforts.
I asked a friend who also has a nautical background and his suggestion was use them for wallpaper. I like the walls in this cabin but the ceiling is covered with shiny foil-faced insulation and has been waiting for years while I try to think of a covering for it. Here’s what happened to that idea.
I brought out all the charts and all kinds of glues for the project. I even bought some moveable scaffolding. The first day I found the laminated charts would not stick to the slick foil surface. In the process of wrestling with it I stepped back off the scaffolding and landed with my back against the corner of a heavy coffee table. As I laid there taking inventory of my battered body, I decided this was not going to work. Once I regained my wits I dressed and headed out on the snowmachine to the trail head, managed to drive my truck to a health clinic 12 miles away and learned I was lucky. I had a bruise that was covering the lower right quadrant of my back, but no damage to internal organs.
I stayed with some friends overnight, then came back the next day. The first thing I did was put the charts behind the couch and never look back.
Then today I was cleaning back there and came across them. The first thing I thought about was “your kids don’t want your stuff. The second was a memory of a story I read once about a guy who was preparing for his boating season. He had taken out his charts with the idea of cleaning them, erasing all the course lines he’d plotted over the years, all the position fixes, and many of his calculations. He stopped, though when he realized every one of the scribblings on his charts represented a good time spent on the water and he was getting lost in the memories. In the end he decided to leave them on the charts.
I thought of that as I looked at these charts of mine today. Many of them have the same kind of scribbling, the same memories and the collection stands as a reminder of one of the happiest periods in my ife. So I rolled them up and put them up in the loft with the storage containers I had put up there yesterday, where they will probably stay until they come to haul me off. Unless I discover them again some times and try to live my storms at sea. And then some.
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