Friday, September 16, 2005
More Vacation Snippets
Snippet
The day is clear, the water smooth. I have rented a Kayak. The kayak has a rudder that you maneuver with two foot-pedals, kind of like driving a stickshift. Press the right peddle, the kayak moves right; push left/move left. Port and Starboard.
I follow along the right-hand side of the inner harbor, and I push my upper body to get into the turn right and left flow of paddling. Under and past the footbridge, high-tide marked on the pilings with a line of snails and barnacles, sunlight shining in shafts through the planks above; past the wooden cabin cruisers, the fiberglass hulls of skiffs and yachts, the floats loaded with lobster-traps; past styrofoam buoys.
When the harbor opens up, the sea becomes a little more choppy but this version of the kayak is effortless to manage and it easily cuts through the swells. When the water splashes I can taste the salt. Past an island reportedly owned or once-owned by a 50's B-actor and past another island with a stubby lighthouse, my focus is a private island lined on its periphery with summer cottages that I can tell even from a distance are already emptied and boarded for the season. In a notch between two homes, turquoise and pearl surf crashes silently onto a white-sand beach that shines in the sun. I aim the kayak for that.
As I push towards the beach, many of the boats in the inner harbor are underway behind and alongside at the other side of the widening bay. Small motorboats shoot past larger single or double-masted schooners with sails not yet unfurled chugging out under motor power, seemingly racing against a single line of clouds.
With one final push, I ride the crest of one wave and beach the kayak, jumping out to pull it up onto the salty dry section. The summer houses stare in shocked silence with empty window sockets. Wild grass tosses in the wind. I have the beach to myself.
I have a clear view of an expanse of the bay. I watch one low-riding navy-colored yacht with grey sails sail by and begin to navigate a turn. As it turns in profile, the sails flutter like a confused fish and hang for a slow second; but in another second, the wind catches and around the bend it goes.
I don't notice an classic tugboat painted green with gleaming wood and loaded with flags until there a puff of grey smoke comes from it, floating and dissipating in a slow and perfect cigar smoke circle. The sound of a rifle shot comes across a moment later.
On the sailing vessel closest, a figure frantically pulls at rope attached to pulleys. A huge crimson front-sail begins unfurling, too fast for the wind to catch -- the sail momentarily sags and dips into the water. But as the top triangle shoots up, up to the tip of the mast, a hesitant shadow moves through the sail; the wind then catches and it snaps to. The sound, clean like sheets on a clothes-line, follows. The boat is already tipping out to the horizon.
Where the boats had been circling like a school of sharks, there is sudden order. The motored boats have slowed; the schooners with sails are lining up. Again and again, there are puffs of smoke and front-sails grandly unveiled like tablecloths at a picnic. Most rigs appear large compared to the motor and fishing boats swarming around them like flies, but one behomoth dwarfs them all, its steel masts reach beyond the sun. Its red white and blue front-sail, unveiled in a shadow across the water, is large enough to be a country and has a pattern resembling a scandanavian nation.
I sit on the beach alternately watching and reading a book.
What I read:
Sex, Art and American Culture, Essays by Camille Paglia, c. 1991.
Solitude: A Return to the Self, by Anthony Storr, 1988.
Two philosophy books long standing on my 'to read' pile.
The day is clear, the water smooth. I have rented a Kayak. The kayak has a rudder that you maneuver with two foot-pedals, kind of like driving a stickshift. Press the right peddle, the kayak moves right; push left/move left. Port and Starboard.
I follow along the right-hand side of the inner harbor, and I push my upper body to get into the turn right and left flow of paddling. Under and past the footbridge, high-tide marked on the pilings with a line of snails and barnacles, sunlight shining in shafts through the planks above; past the wooden cabin cruisers, the fiberglass hulls of skiffs and yachts, the floats loaded with lobster-traps; past styrofoam buoys.
When the harbor opens up, the sea becomes a little more choppy but this version of the kayak is effortless to manage and it easily cuts through the swells. When the water splashes I can taste the salt. Past an island reportedly owned or once-owned by a 50's B-actor and past another island with a stubby lighthouse, my focus is a private island lined on its periphery with summer cottages that I can tell even from a distance are already emptied and boarded for the season. In a notch between two homes, turquoise and pearl surf crashes silently onto a white-sand beach that shines in the sun. I aim the kayak for that.
As I push towards the beach, many of the boats in the inner harbor are underway behind and alongside at the other side of the widening bay. Small motorboats shoot past larger single or double-masted schooners with sails not yet unfurled chugging out under motor power, seemingly racing against a single line of clouds.
With one final push, I ride the crest of one wave and beach the kayak, jumping out to pull it up onto the salty dry section. The summer houses stare in shocked silence with empty window sockets. Wild grass tosses in the wind. I have the beach to myself.
I have a clear view of an expanse of the bay. I watch one low-riding navy-colored yacht with grey sails sail by and begin to navigate a turn. As it turns in profile, the sails flutter like a confused fish and hang for a slow second; but in another second, the wind catches and around the bend it goes.
I don't notice an classic tugboat painted green with gleaming wood and loaded with flags until there a puff of grey smoke comes from it, floating and dissipating in a slow and perfect cigar smoke circle. The sound of a rifle shot comes across a moment later.
On the sailing vessel closest, a figure frantically pulls at rope attached to pulleys. A huge crimson front-sail begins unfurling, too fast for the wind to catch -- the sail momentarily sags and dips into the water. But as the top triangle shoots up, up to the tip of the mast, a hesitant shadow moves through the sail; the wind then catches and it snaps to. The sound, clean like sheets on a clothes-line, follows. The boat is already tipping out to the horizon.
Where the boats had been circling like a school of sharks, there is sudden order. The motored boats have slowed; the schooners with sails are lining up. Again and again, there are puffs of smoke and front-sails grandly unveiled like tablecloths at a picnic. Most rigs appear large compared to the motor and fishing boats swarming around them like flies, but one behomoth dwarfs them all, its steel masts reach beyond the sun. Its red white and blue front-sail, unveiled in a shadow across the water, is large enough to be a country and has a pattern resembling a scandanavian nation.
I sit on the beach alternately watching and reading a book.
What I read:
Sex, Art and American Culture, Essays by Camille Paglia, c. 1991.
Solitude: A Return to the Self, by Anthony Storr, 1988.
Two philosophy books long standing on my 'to read' pile.