Wake, Wake
Halt the dream that brought a smile
Come stand with me on the shore a while
And watch the breakers, break and break
Be pressed down by low, pitch brume
Wait, please Wait
Stand close, be still
Face be stung by brine and chill
And Heaven, the hue of Cornish slate
Awaits the knock of the skipper's mate
Cry, Cry
That's all that's left
Heave your breast and be bereft
And yawl like the blow, down deep, down low
Down to the locker 'neath the brackish spume
I’ve always loved the sea. Just the sight of the sea calms me. Especially a stormy sea where the grey of the sky and the sea blend together at the horizon. There is something about being near, or on, the sea that makes me feel both close to death and most alive at the same time.
I learned to swim in the seas of a Scottish bay, surrounded by high hills. So cold at first then, gradually, warmer than the air. Squatting down beneath the surface was like pulling the duvet over my head on a cold morning. Sometimes the sea there was flat, “like a mill pond” my Dad would say, but I remember it best when the white crested waves marched in triplets and threw themselves, grumpily, onto the shore.
There’s a headland on the left side of the bay that pokes out into the Irish Sea. To get to it, you need to scramble over the slippery ledges along the bay’s cliffs. The drop from the ledges was low enough to overcome any fear of falling, but high enough to make you lean into the cliff face as you traversed them. I would go there often when the clouds darkened and the tide was fully up. Wrapped in woolly clothes, boots and hooded coat, with the wind howling around me, I would sit in an armchair-shaped rock crevice at the promontory’s furthest point, watching and listening, until the tide turned and the waves retreated.
Once, when I was little, maybe 8 or 9, we all went to Ireland on holiday and crossed over the Irish Sea on a ferry. The waves were so big, that the ferry had to climb one side before pitching over and surfing down the other to bury her bow in the sea below. The waves broke over the ship whipping a spray across the decks that truly hurt if they hit you in the face.
I had a scratch on my face from some scrappy sporting incident, or it may have been the sharp edge of Bach’s cello concerto when I flipped it to side 2, either way it stung like buggery when the salt water made contact. My Dad said it would heal faster.
Everyone on the ship seemed to be sick as dogs, and everywhere was awash with the ill advised sausage/fish/pie/gammon and chips they had consumed in the calmer waters of Liverpool Bay. My Dad, an old navy hand, stood on the deck of the ship, steady as a steady thing, and said:
“You think this is bad, you should try Biscay!“
I didn’t feel sick. I felt excited. In touch. The lurching movements of the tortured vessel, the howl of the wind and the ever present briny spray, combined to make me feel more alive, and more tuned to my senses, than I ever had before. At the same time I had never felt so unsafe or so vulnerable. I stood by my Dad watchin’ the waves roll in, then I watched them roll away again (there’s a song in there somewhere).
The ship swayed and tipped beneath my Dad’s feet like a bucking bronco but he looked as still and as rooted as Nelson’s Column. He looked to the horizon and I imagined that he was remembering his Navy days. The horizon held his gaze for a long time though. Maybe he was feeling what I was feeling. I wanted to be just like him, and I told him I was going to join the Navy and buy him a Rolls Royce with my first weeks wages.
One more story. Just one I promise.
My sister Sharon, was very outdoorsy. She did all of her Duke of Edinburgh awards and knew her stuff when it came to being out there in the elements. Every now and again, when I went to stay with her in Scotland, she would offer to take me for a walk up one of the mountains nearby. These are not the granite giants that you get further up North in Scotland. These are high hills surrounded by mirror lochs and scenery that will make you cry.
On one such occasion, I was up for Christmas and Sharon suggested we tackle Cairnsmore (711 meters). We got properly geared up because whilst the weather was fine at the moment, it could turn pretty awful quickly. We set off and drove to the foot of the Munroe and parked the car.
Sharon had the maps and compass and was our navigator. Our destination was the Cairn at the summit (small stack of rocks that marks the summit). The skies were grey but we could see the summit from where we parked, so we began our ascent.
Everything was going great and in a couple of hours we were about half way up. Then everything changed very quickly. The snow came in all at once, with a fierce wind that drove the snow into our faces as we walked. In minutes, we were in the middle of a snow storm or “white-out”. We stopped and Sharon turned to me and over the roar of the wind shouted:
“I think this is pretty bad and it’s going to get worse. What do you want to do? We can turn back, but we have the right gear and I can get us to the top, so if you want to, we can push on”
I was clueless to be honest, but trusted Sharon and her abilities, and if she said she could get us to the top I believed her. In any case, I was getting that feeling again. I wanted to push on. I didn’t want to go back. I wanted it to get worse. We weren’t in control and I didn’t want to be.
We could see nothing beyond 5 meters in any direction. I told Sharon I wanted to go up. She nodded, took out her compass and map, took a bearing and pointed.
“Walk on in that direction 10 feet”
She instructed. I did so and looked back. I could just see Sharon. She walked up to me and pointed again.
“Walk on in that direction 10 feet”
We continued our upward progress like this for hours. It was exhausting. Then, as I walked wearily forward again, a grey shape emerged from the blizzard just feet in front of me. It was the summit cairn! I turned to Sharon grinning. She walked up to me.
“Here we are then”
She summed up. The understatement was breathtaking. I don’t think I had ever been so impressed, nor have I since. To navigate with such accuracy and calm in these conditions was insane. That girl should have been in the SAS but she has some mamby-pamby ideas about not garrotting foreign people in the dark of night.
The snowstorm was getting worse. Snow now lay thick on the ground, and was piling up in drifts around us. Sharon pointed to a shallow hollow some 20 meters down from the summit.
“We need to take shelter John. We should be out of the wind down there”
We hunkered down with our heads below the wall of the hollow. We were at once protected from the storm. It raged all around us but the wind and snow blew over our heads like a roaring icy river. If I had reached up, I could have dipped my hand in it. The calm in the hollow was in stark contrast to the elemental chaos just a few feet away. We sat there quietly for a moment, cozy, and watched and listened. It was a deeply spiritual moment and I felt very connected to Sharon. I felt intensely alive but cowered before the immense force of nature. As I looked up, for just a second, I could swear I saw the face of God in the storm.
Since then, there have been other times in my life where I have felt the same way. On each occasion, I had a spiritual connection to my surroundings and an enhanced sense of vitality that was always accompanied by a heightened sense of danger or vulnerability. On these occasions, I was happy. I came away from these events feeling enriched, becalmed and spiritually refreshed. Not in a religious way. I am not fortunate enough to be a person of faith. I am a spiritual person though, and I feel that most at these unordinary moments in my life.
I’m not a thrill seeker or an adrenalin junky either. For example I can see no point whatsoever in throwing oneself out of a perfectly good aeroplane, or off a bridge or a cliff. All that “Whoo Hooing” and “Yeahing” at the end would drive me bloody nutzo as well. I’m conditioned to not like feeling like I’m not in control.
I’ve listened to the clerics, who provide a clearly laid out roadmap, that tells me if I just follow these few simple rules, not only will I be in control of my life, I’ll be a good person, and so my afterlife will be assuredly a happy one. I’ve read the management books. I’ve listened to the corporate witch doctors who’ve told me that things are causal or deterministic. Apparently, I just need to make the right choices and decisions, based on the right information at the right time, and not only will I be able to control my universe but I will be able to predict it too. Can’t say fairer than that can you?
It’s so not true though. None of it. For me anyway. That little voice at the back of my mind that just keeps saying “Hmmm, really?”. I’m not saying the clerics and the gurus are all lying to me. That’d be a bit conspiracy theoryish wouldn’t it? I believe they truly believe what they are saying and actually so do the vast majority of the people on the planet. But all the preaching and all of the gurus have just led me to a place of doubt. Why did so many people feel so confident that they could control their time here, and the events that effect their lives, when I felt so not in control? More importantly, why was it that the more I accepted that everything was random, and that I actually controlled nothing, the happier I seemed to be? In fact, when things are at their most random, most chaotic or most desperate, I feel like there lies meaning. What’s that all about?
“Below 40o South there is no Law. Below 50o South there is no God”
Sailors who have been there will tell you not to go to the Southern Ocean in winter. They say it’s worse than Danté’s Inferno. Dark angry skies and endless waves, like granite behemoths, roll in from all directions, capsizing boats and rolling them over and over like socks in a tumble dryer. Howling winds that scream through the rigging and tear any foolish sail. Broken masts, broken steering gear and snapped rigging. Nothing dry. Everything wet. Clothes, sleeping bags, socks, floors and bedding. Biting and numbing cold. Icebergs. Chaos. Random. Desperate. Above all desperate. A sense that this might be where life’s journey ends.
Some time ago, I told an Australian colleague of mine, who had done the Round the World Clipper race, and who had sailed the Southern Ocean, that I would love to sail the Southern Ocean in winter. He just looked at me like I was stupid.
“You don’t know what you are asking for mate. Even the best sailors don’t go there in winter and you’ve never sailed a bloody day in your life. You’d be about as useful as tits on a bull!”
Such poets the Aussies.
Of course he’s right. I have no place in the Southern Ocean in winter. Apparently nobody did. If I did go, I would have to go with a world class sailor and so would, in effect, be selfishly putting his or her life at risk too. If I really wanted to go though, shouldn’t I have done something about it by now?
Well, yes. I should have. The fact that I haven’t just means that I lack the cojones to go down there myself. But you should go. When you come back you can tell me all about it. I’m betting it will be a life changing experience for you. I mean, if you come back right? You probably won’t. You could send me an email from onboard, at the height of the storm, just before you snuff it.
I envy people of Faith. They look out a window, see a tree and say “See? The hand of God”. They see him/her everywhere and in everything. They see order where I see chaos and in that order they witness God. I’ve looked where they look and I haven’t found him/her there, but I remember that moment, in the chaos of the storm, on the summit of Cairnsmore.
Who knows what is down there in the Southern Ocean. They say there’s no God below 50o South, but maybe they’re wrong. Maybe down there in the dark, and the driving rain and the howling wind and the mountainous seas, down in the randomness of the storm, maybe that’s where God really lives. Maybe there I would be able to glimpse his face again. Maybe I’d hear his voice.
