The Starship and the Canoe by Kenneth Brower

Author:Kenneth Brower
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781680512793
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
Published: 2020-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

25

The Most Beautiful Thing in the World

One evening George was sniffling as he fixed dinner. He set the food out for us and left without eating anything. I found him later down by his baidarka, where he had taken off the yellow hatch-covers and was pulling his masts and sails out through the manholes. I mentioned the sniffling and asked if he was sick. No, he said, the sniffling was just a symptom of something wrong in his head. He knew what he needed—to get out for a while in his canoe.

He invited me along, and I quickly accepted. It would be my first ride in the baidarka. We seized the manhole rims and walked the canoe toward the bay. I was surprised at how easily the hull moved over the tussocks of the meadow. The canoe’s length smoothed out the bumps, and the boat seemed to slide on rails into the water. The tide was high and it came right up to the grass. I waded out in my gum boots and climbed into the forward hole. George pushed off, then climbed into the middle hole.

My forward hole was the smallest of the three, and the space in the prow was confined. It took some contortions to fit my legs in and get them comfortable. It occurred to me that if the canoe flipped, it would take a while to get out, yet somehow I felt perfectly safe. I had been in many small boats on the ocean without ever completely losing my uneasiness; the prospect of drowning always had been somewhere in the back of my mind. Now it was gone. I didn’t know why.

We sat very low on the water, an inch or two beneath sea level. It is this closeness, believes George, and the snugness of the manhole, that banishes fear of the ocean. He may be right. I looked inside the hole. The blue fiberglass was translucent, and the daylight came through beautifully. Beside my thigh in an undulating line was a darker blue where the ocean met the day. George saw me studying the interior light. “In late summer, the water is phosphorescent, sometimes,” he said. “At night this canoe glows.” From down so low on the water, the mountains above Torch Bay rose higher and nobler than they had before. The small difference in vantage changed the view markedly, and I seemed to see Torch Bay with new eyes. That was fine with me, for like George I was tired of my old eyes and the old Torch Bay. I had been here six weeks.

The canoe came to a slim point a few feet in front of me. Unless I looked straight down, I saw no canoe at all. It was a great sensation, like being seated Christlike on the water. The baidarka was not much wider than my shoulders. Leaning slightly, I could look directly down into the fiord, from three feet away. With my first glance I saw a jellyfish, my first of the season.

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