Journey

I am reposting last year’s answer to this prompt because I still feel that it’s an accurate representation of my feelings on this topic.

Daily writing prompt

Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.

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While in the Navy, I visited the Caribbean. I even spent some time in that tropical paradise they call Guantanamo Bay. The facilities, by the way, are vastly overrated. That is the furthest physical location I’ve traveled to. I’ll pass on a return trip. But I’ll never forget the sights of the sea in peace and anger. Have you ever seen the radiant phosphorescence of the ocean in the tropics? Or have you seen flying fish or the sun rising from deep swells? Have you seen whales off the starboard bow? If not, you are not a bluewater sailor.

One of my fondest memories is leaving a cold, dismal Boston one March evening. I went to my rack and slept. When I woke, I went up on deck. We were in the middle of the vast river in the ocean called the Gulf Stream. It was about

60°F outside, with the smell and promise of places away southward where we were bound. Then, there were evenings in heavy seas. They feared the rudder would be carried away. Cold, sullen days with the rain lashing followed. There were also days when you moved from squall to squall, never drying out.

Anchor watches and distance

A few years later, it was anchor watches on a 34-foot ketch. I was nodding off. Then came an urgent tug, which meant the anchor might be dragging. It kept me just on the edge of wakefulness. Then came afternoons, sailing for the mooring—the wind behind sails wing on wing. You hauled wind at last to catch the mooring in as neat a maneuver as you’d ever seen. Distance is relative. You can go thousands of miles and never experience what lies between. You fly over it all, perhaps catching the tunes or news on the radio. The destination is everything. But to the sailor, it’s the passage, the journey—the one-day-at-a-time series of passages. What’s waiting is exciting when land hauls up over the sea; you grow expectant. You’ve had your fill of the sea, for now. But after tasting it, you’ll never, ever wonder again what Melville meant when he wrote:

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.