March 31, 2024, 20:25
High 72ºF/ Low 49ºF, scattered showers, pressure 1011mb, waning gibbous
Last week I wrote about our journey through the Great Dismal Swamp, the penultimate passage of a 9000-mile voyage aboard a 36-foot sailboat called Azimuth.
Azimuth was our home for seven years and carried us through seven countries.
Our vessel turns wind into forward momentum, salt water into fresh, and sunshine into power and refrigeration. It has ample storage for a month’s food supply, two weeks of water, twenty-two gallons of diesel, minimal wardrobes, hobby supplies, and more books than one might expect. It takes five minutes to tidy and even less to make chaos.
In the summer of 2020, my sweetie and I were living and working remotely on the boat during the pandemic, the California wildfires, and the protests in Oakland surrounding the murder of George Floyd. My mom was diagnosed with cancer and my sister had COVID for five weeks running. My sweetie and I were directed to lay off most of the teams we managed, including parents of young ones and folks older than us. No course seemed to make sense except to pay attention to what was on board, and to make an effort to get closer to family and a life that felt sustainable or possibly even generative. We had bought Azimuth intending to sail somewhere far away, but a route had failed to emerge in the previous years. We were feeling ourselves get older and a certain stubbornness kicking in. We could feel the dream slipping and a window opening. Half a year later when the world stabilized a bit, we took off.
I’ve wanted to sum up our trip and call it done for awhile now, but I’ve been stuck in the swamp.
The final month of the journey was a big push before hurricane season. We slept somewhere new nearly every night along the Intracoastal Waterway on the East Coast of the US. The schedule was comforting: wake around 5 AM, start the coffee, stow loose items, fire up the diesel engine, and coax Scott on deck to weigh anchor or shove off a dock. I drove for a few hours while he caught some extra zzz’s, and then we traded on and off. We spent a lot of time puttering along together, enjoying but also unnerved by our home country after almost two years of traveling outside the US. When out in the ocean, we could cook and go to the bathroom between glances at the horizon. In inland waterways, we remained at the helm to avoid collision with nearby landforms, channel markers, and other water people. We aimed to cover 30–50 miles per day, which had us arriving at the next port before the threat of lively afternoon storms.
The focus required to time our routes to drawbridge openings, operate the vessel, enjoy the view, and consider the ending of such an epic chapter was all-consuming.
Although we only moved along at a top speed of approximately six miles per hour, it felt like we slammed to a halt once we docked the boat in Virginia in mid-June.
We stayed aboard for two days before taking refuge inland with air conditioning and family. Our trip had been a year longer than expected and we found ourselves landlocked after lots of gliding along. Jobs, licenses, and a newer version of our old car came around with time and effort. We rented a house in the city with friends and filled it with hand-me-downs, hand-delivered by my sister and me in a UHaul from Michigan. I played in a water polo tournament at my alma mater and returned to New York to sail with old friends and attend a climate conference. I was retracing my steps and picking up pieces I had set down to go to sea.
My nervous system was wide open from the sea time, accustomed to listening for new sounds, fine-tuning the sails to the weather, and listening more actively while communicating in Spanish. I felt on edge from the influx of media, screen time, and calendar events that came with our return. Suddenly I was spending hours a day with people I had known for years or hoped to know in the years to come — I was no longer simply passing through or miles offshore. I had panic attacks in a grocery store and gas station. I swam laps at the local pool and swa. in Lake Michigan, the river alongside my parents’ cabin, and even guided a group of friends to swim in the James River in January. I went on countless walks. I tended many bonfires.
Sometimes people would say, “This is Ashley. She sailed here!” And me and my new contact would have no idea what to do with this information. Often people asked about bad weather or mechanical failures and I squirmed, trying to make our trauma seem casual, yet interesting or impressive enough to discuss. Trying to make it seem like the whole thing wasn't a fools errand that we somehow pulled off! Trying to make it seem inspirational in case someone has a wild idea they would like to try. As I adjust to life on land, the stories are coming more easily. These sailing yarns usually involve our cat, wild animal encounters, or the Panama Canal. I talk about how we lived on the boat for six years in San Francisco, squirreling away the money saved on rent, practicing, dreaming, and having fun. I want to say that anyone could do something like this, but it feels disingenuous while in the difficult adjustment period following it. I feel silly, or maybe just guilty, having a hard time adjusting when many people never get to live out a stretch of life that so strongly asserts their own preferences.
Living within my capacity now requires saying no often. I can feel the tipping point in which I overcommit and start ruining pleasurable experiences. How can I rush when I so enjoyed going slowly but steadily? How can I integrate what I learned when society rewards more, more, more, faster faster, faster?
I don’t know how to share what it was like to see nothing but my crew, the boat, the water, and the stars for days. I don’t know how to explain how isolating and exhausting it was sometimes, or that most of the time, it was the most amazing thing. I don’t know how to explain the freedom I felt out there and what it did for my sense of self. I don’t know how to put all these parts of me back in the box so that I can be a productive member of society. I feel like a frog that jumped back into the boiling pot. I don’t feel equipped to say the things that most need saying.
I miss it and I was so ready for it to be over.
On Leap Day this year, I read the installment below in Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening:
Who’s to say that the budding of wings from the ribs of small birds doesn’t begin with the impulse within them to live? Who’s to say that the butterfly breaking through its chrysalis isn’t the result of its being tired of living in a tight weave of its own making?
Who’s to say that the migration of flamingoes from South America to Africa doesn’t begin with the yearning to eat the yellow ribbon that keeps lining the horizon?
And who’s to say the color of passion doesn’t line our faces the instant we grow tired of living in a tight cocoon of our own making? Who’s to say the journey to love doesn’t begin the instant we give voice to that loneliness that no one wants to hear? Who’s to say the journey to peace doesn’t sprout like a small wing the instant we let our feelings find their place in the world?
In truth, every effort that is allowed its full beat within will ripple as a birth of some kind in the world.
I have grown tired of the tight weave of my own making and it feels like I busted loose in March.
Back in the day, the Great Dismal Swamp came all the way North to the James River, a stone’s throw from where I now live. I needed time in the metaphorical swamp to decompose big experiences and sit with land and water. After a summer and fall of trying to go the pace of land dwellers, I needed to weave a cocoon for winter, just as I needed to bust loose.
We arrived in June, but I'm really here now.
So lovely! And so lovely to have you "home"!