I was racing a baby sea turtle
across the Pacific Ocean and not doing so well. I had been at sea for 161 days since leaving California trying to row
solo around the world and one late morning I found myself going stroke for stroke with a
six month-old, green shelled, yellow under bellied chelonian mydas paddling off my port
side. We were both heading towards Australia 1,600 miles away and at our best we were
doing half the speed of walking.
I didn't take off on my voyage to
race turtles across the oceans. It was simpler than that. I did it because nobody had ever
rowed around the world before and I thought I'd try to be the first. I had all the great
irrational reasons. I was young, out of work, hungry for adventure and full of naivety and
ignorance. Who knows? Maybe I'll even get some glory out of it.
But it was nine years between
coming up with the idea to row around the world and derby day with the turtle and by then,
things had changed. I was now 43, married with two kids, scared, in debt, nursing my
aching body, getting trashed a lot and I had even disqualified myself by using my
emergency sail for a day and a half. But I was still compelled to keep going and sometimes
I wasn't even sure why. It was just something in my gut that said row another stroke, eat
another meal, watch another sunset.
My Hawaiian ancestors call it
na`au. It means from the gut. From the inside. It's that place where truth and strength
live within us, talks to us and tries to guide us. A kind of primal compass. My elders
knew to trust that when they went to sea and I'm learning to trust that as well, to help
me understand the oceans and to kept me safe. My gut was also telling me something else
that day. That the turtle, two feet from the side of my boat and about the size of a
dinner plate, wasn't really working that hard to keep up with me.
He was swimming on top of the water
with his head just below the surface and even though I sped up the pace of my stroke, he
looked unimpressed and unthreatened. I didn't know whether to respect that or be insulted.
The weather was very cooperative
that day. It was sunny, light favorable winds and the seas were calm. I normally have my
yellow canvas awning pulled over the rowing station to block the sun, but I left it rolled
up so I could feel the sun and keep an eye on my competitor.
In the middle of one of my strokes,
the turtle suddenly lifted his head out of the water and stared directly into my eyes and
we both began to slow down our strokes. Looking into his eyes, I saw millions of years and
hundreds of generations of wisdom. I'm sure he saw "I want cookie dough ice
cream" in mine.
The last time I looked that direct
into a pair of eyes was a few months ago with my wife Stacia while we were standing at our
front door when I was leaving on the row. Stacia grabbed my shoulders, looked me squared
on and said, "Promise me you will always, always keep tied to the boat." She and
I had sailed the Pacific together and she knew the reality that if I ever got separated
from the boat, it was over. I promised.
Maybe the turtle got bored. Maybe
he finally felt threatened or maybe he just decided to prove a point and show off, because
he took one last gaze, ducked his head back under the water, took four quick strokes and
blasted ahead of me. I was left looking at the back end of a small trail of bubbles.
At first I took it personally. I
still had 20,000 miles of ocean ahead of me to row and I just got left in the wake of a
7-pound, baby sea turtle. How was I ever going to pull this thing off? The thought of that
got into to my little brain and worked on me for a few strokes until I finally took a
break. I pulled my 10-foot spruce oars out of the water, opened the hatch and crawled into
my cabin.
My cabin, jammed with electronics,
food, books and other gear, is about the size of the trunk in our '84 Volvo station wagon
sitting back home in our driveway. The limited space in my cabin forces you to either sit
up meditation style with your legs bent and crossed, or you have to lie down. The turtle
incident required the lying down position.
While I stared at the ceiling, it
didn't take long for the enlightenment hammer to hit me over the head. It was a
mouth-dropping-open epiphany. We were salty soul mates, kindred spirits riding oar to fin
on the wave of serendipity, sea brothers separated merely by species, income and diet.
Both of us were slow moving creatures, kind of goofy, extremely vulnerable, prone to
making heads shake back and forth from strangers and on a solo journey, happy to just hit
anything on the other side of the Pacific and still be in one piece.
I was still staring at the ceiling
when it really fell into place. At home I have sitting on my computer, a small two-inch
wooden sea turtle my mom sent to me a few years back when I was putting the row together.
Ten seconds before I shoved off from the dock in Hawaii, a stranger shoved his way through
the crowd, didn't say a word and handed me a paper mache sea turtle that is still on my
boat leaning against the rear bulkhead about six-inches from my right ear. Our family
emblem is the honu, Hawaiian for sea turtle, representing about 4,000 members and a dozen
generations.
Rowing at sea for me is a series of
small steps. One stroke at a time. One meal at a time. Any real drama is spread out
hundreds of miles apart and I could go for weeks and not mumble a word. It's this daily
grind that can chisel away at me making my real struggle, not the dramatic storms, curious
sharks or loneliness, but staying clear and simply enjoying the darn thing moment by
moment. I had a million of these moments still ahead of me and that little guy helped me
take them on with a smile.
Happy and excited about my new
revelation, I lied there smiling, cozy and snug in my bunk in the middle of the ocean
listening to the gentle lapping of the waves and decided to appreciate one of those
moments. I rolled over and took a nap.
It's no mystery now whether I ended
up making it to Australia or not. I did, and in one piece. But not before having bow and
arrows pointed at me by Solomon Island tribesmen wearing tree bark, not without whimpering
in the Coral Sea while staring at 40-foot seas or stressing out over the words on my chart
that say Great Barrier Reef, which I think is aborigine for "eats boats."
I can laugh about some of that
stuff now, because I am sitting safely back at home, thousands of miles from all that,
surrounded by the familiar and comforting sounds of family hood. My TV remote and a
bacon-cheeseburger are only a few feet away. But all I have to do is pull out a small
cardboard box I have tucked away in storage and look at a few photos, check out some
footage I shot at sea and it all comes back; the chaos just to get to that first stroke
and the other 1.6 million strokes that somehow got me across the Pacific Ocean. And I
smile.
Copyright @2000 Mick Bird |
