Variations on the 'last tack'

Sailing has sparked a fresh start in so many ways for this gal, who is standing up and cheering because her ship has come in. 

I am happily involved as a budding member in the Rendezvous Yacht Club and learning as much about life and myself as I am about the master art of sailing.

I have spent many years reading books and studying philosophies that revolve around the “power of now” and other modalities that harness my thinking into the moment at hand and away from the yesterdays and tomorrows and unknowns.

Learning to sail on Rainy Lake these past few weeks has done more for my focus on the present than all the books I’ve ever read or ever will.

Wind can shape the land, shift the desert, move fires across forests and drive you crazy when you are having a good hair day.Wind is both my teammate and my opponent and is becoming a most intriguing source of study for me in watching the waves on the water.

When I am out there on the lake and playing my small part in the warrior bid to sail I find myself thinking back to the tall ships that brought our ancestors here to Canada from overseas and oh, the long and arduous journey it must have been to harness the wind across the expanse of an ocean.

Our people must have jumped up and down to see land and the final leg of the voyage.

I am smitten by the freedom from worry that sailing brings to my heart and soul and while the big ship adventures of the past intrigue me, I have yet to empathize with any joy those yesteryear passengers might have had in getting off the boat.

When I’m out there sailing, not one cell in my body wants to go home.

My captain understands this. I suspect all sailing captains understand this.

My captain and I have often talked about the “last tack” that must occur before heading to shore and how he often wants to put off coming about on that last tack as long as he can because he knows the world will slowly creep back in on him once he steps off the boat.

Aye.

The reality is of course that we all have to get off the boat and back to our worlds and each time I step off onto the dock I try to do it with intention and not regret.

So far I am infused with such a sense of well being when my foot hits the dock I really can’t imagine not welcoming whatever is waiting for me.

Of course, I can say that now.

Recently in my neck of the woods my intuition waved a red flag of caution in the seconds before I opened the porch door and my fear of the unknown was the reality I found in the porch. 

What was that I wrote last week about dogs?

“We (and me included) in our fear of the unknown could take a life lesson from a dog.”

“Note to Self” and “Dog Lesson #2”: Do not leave an anxious dog in the porch during a raging thunder and lightening storm when you are away from home.

The doorframe into the house was in shreds and the metal threshold and flooring were torn off at the landing into the kitchen.

One dog looked guilty while the other one just sat there shifting his gaze back and forth, refusing to make eye contact with me.

I’ve often thought “Cash was lacking a few brain cells but that day he was smart enough not to look at me and the “Medusa” snakes emerging out of my hair when I saw all the damage his cohort had done trying to get herself in the house and away from the storm.

Right then I wanted to eat my copy of the book “Peace is Every Breath” by Thich Nhat Hanh in the hopes that it would calm me down.

Thanks to my good Dad and the inventor of wood filler, I think the door will recover.

I also think “Dot” is scarred for life in a storm but if I ever need to get rescued out of a cave blocked by boulders, I’m sure that dog would qualify as the “jaws of life.” I am amazed she still has teeth.

And life goes on. Here’s to another last tack and on to new horizons.

My youngest offspring, whom I often forget is only on the cutting edge of 22, is off to greater adventures in southern Ontario prior to University start-up next month.

She is the epitome of a city-driven soul and the small town life—no matter how fantastic it is for the rest of us—has never been in her blood.

Sail on Heather!

Followers make good teachers

Sometimes I think I’m “all that” and I am!

And then I do idiocy and dig my bicycle out of a two-year storage, plunk on a helmet made for a bigger brain and pedal like the dickens (because I was going to be late) the 8.5 km to work.

About two kilometers into the stupidity was when I rolled my eyes to the wind and said out loud in my self-deprecating voice things that I shall not repeat in public. My saddle bones were smoldering from bike seat friction, my lungs were on fire, and I’d lost feeling in my right hand from gripping the hand bar too tight.

I may be over zealous sometimes but I am not a quitter.

About four km into the madness, as I brewed up a new language of expletives, I became aware of an unknown creature running behind me on the country road and spewing loud, guttural huffing noises.

A large black bear with sharp teeth loped its way into my imagination and I knew if I turned around I would realize my worst fear—I was about to be his breakfast.

Many times I have been in my car on this same road minding my own business when a hairy, matted beast such as this has tromped out of the bush to stop and stare menacingly at me as I drove by.

On that morning as I listened to the hungry panting carnivore close in on my apple bottom, I didn’t think I had any energy left to escape.

Never underestimate yourself.

Without looking back I tore off like “Whinny the Race Horse” at the stretch to the finish line and a bag of oats.

Before I knew it the huffing sound faded and I was far enough ahead to risk looking back. I had my middle finger sign at the ready and was churning up a few choice words as I turned to look over my right shoulder at the loser.

The black thing and its long tongue flapping madly from side to side still was running at full speed towards me.

It was my dog, “Cash.”

Never in his life had he left the yard by himself except to take a pee in the field next to the house. This 4 km journey was for him a blind race on faith to stay close to me. 

When I’m at home working in the yard, Cash follows me everywhere I go. He braves meat-eating gnats and the summer heat to stay near me. When I am inside the house, he will lay as close to me as the dog rules allow. Even when I’m in the “loo,” he will move from his spot in another room I’ve been in and into the hallway outside the bathroom.

My initial reaction was anger at the dog for following me on the road and yet, why should I have been surprised to see him desperately racing to my bike and me that day.

Dogs come into our lives with joy unbounded and teach us the meaning of true devotion. They rest themselves against our souls and make us a part of theirs.

And if someone out there believes a dog has no soul, it is my firm belief they’ve never really loved a dog.

I caught myself in sudden shame after one or two angry shouts to my dog that day because I realized Cash was only doing what was in his heart and the dog rules did not apply to his reasoning about staying close to me.

We (and me included) in our fear of the unknown could take a life lesson from a dog.

“If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it.”

The view of the captain and crew

In general terms I do not like ants. They show up inside the house where they are not welcome and on occasion there is the one ant that is so much bigger than I expect and it freaks me out.

But on the other hand ants also fascinate me and I have great respect for their fortitude in the world.

Their load restrictions bar none, they have incredible focus, and despite formidable and recurring odds ants don’t dally. They strive to rebuild a world they want to live in. They don’t lie at anchor or drift in life when things get messed up.

They are captains of their own ships.

There comes a time in our lives when we have difficult decisions to make in order to get where we really want to go. The winds of change affect us all. How we make it through these often-stormy times depends on the set of our sails.

My very favorite author Mark Nepo wrote;

“Discovering who we are is like breaking a trail up the side of a mountain. Yet the deepest friendships begin when we look into the eye of another and discover that they have been there too.

We carry whole worlds within us as we brush by each other in the supermarket to read mayonnaise jars. The entire drama of life churns in our blood as we rush underground to catch a train. We are always both so known and unknown.”

If a few months ago someone had predicted that come summer, besides having a very happy heart, I would be learning how to sail and be in a sailboat race at the same time, I would have said they needed new batteries for their crystal ball.

But who am I to roll my eyes at what’s in store for me. My beliefs in the Universal Plan are well known. It swallowed me whole in January and then challenged me to carve a new path to the peak—and carried me some—to reemerge stronger and into a beautiful open sky.

I discovered once again that taking chances is worth it and I also learned a little more about what it really means to live in the moment when I took part Saturday in the Rendezvous Yacht Club’s “Mermaid Rock Regatta” as a very green thumb crew member of the “Morning Dove.”

I had the time of my life navigating and watching the sails tighten close to the wind as I learned to coexist with Mother Nature.

And I have a whole new respect for the wind (or lack thereof) and the sailors who venture out in “egg-fry on sidewalk” heat to sweat navigate an often dead calm courses purely for the love of the game.

The lessons I learned were many and most of them could be applied to life as much as they relate to the art of carving out a workable sailing path with the lake wind. 

Little did my Captain know that his shipmate teetered on making an appearance that morning at the docks as she paced back and forth in front of the mirror making petty excuses on why she should stay home.

I kept trying to start my inner trolling motor. I’d get it going a little bit and get on track and then it would quit and I was paddling and paddling and having trouble getting to Point B.

It was all about anxiety and my comfort zone and it sickened me. I realized that my comfort zone where everything was predictable and I was always safe at home meant that if I didn’t take chances I would have no beginning, no middle, and no end to the story of how I came back to life.

Tony Robbins is right. “If you change nothing, nothing changes.”

And as I was sitting on the boat that day fully present in my happiness, I looked over and my Captain was looking at me and was grinning too.

I wanted to stand up and recite to the seagulls from the poem “Invictus.”

“I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul!”  

Mark Twain penned, “20 years from now you will be disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the one’s you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Someone very special to me has Twain's mantra on the wall in his office and by all accounts it holds some of the best advice I’ve yet heard.

Sail on.

Homeland security division on high alert here

Short, sweet, and to the point.

That’s my goal as I write this at 4:30 a.m. on a Tuesday—paddling madly against the tide in the procrastination bay of time frames for my column.

I’m not sure where the last week went. I lost track of it at “Hello” and then was whisked away by the infinite chores in my neck of the woods.

I often think that even 24 hours of sunshine wouldn’t be enough time for me to get done all the things on my list.However there one “to-do” I don’t have to worry about around here and that’s homeland security.

I have my own four-legged officers and they run a very tight border operation. Who needs a high tech system installed when there’s two skunk-bomb sniffing, wild animal chasing, squirrel and chipmunk patrol canine units whose only fee is a daily dish of dry kibble and the occasional scratch behind the ear.

I am one lucky lady. My world is protected by the dog equivalent of the Paladins of Charlemagne’s court in ancient Rome.

Even at 2:30 a.m., in otherwise quiet times in the country, I can be raised from the dead of sleep by the warrior dog whose sniffer works overtime under the open kitchen window where he lays on his blanket in the house.

Whatever it is outside that walks in noiseless wild animal shoes triggering “Cash” to jump out of his dream world and into a barking frenzy, must be scared to death. Heaven knows the ceiling in my bedroom has more than one set of fingernail marks where I’ve clung like a petrified “Sylvester the cat” in a Bugs Bunny cartoon when my homeland security system went off while I was asleep.

Every once in a while I think I would like to own chickens and let them “free range” the farmyard, until I see what happens when a pigeon makes one wrong move by landing on the ground here. My chickens would never have a moment’s peace with “Dot” on shift.

Even a snake’s skin shed by its owner has no chance of deteriorating in the summer sun as nature had intended. If Dot sniffs one out, she snaps it up and whips it around in her jaws until it’s in tatters and poses no threat to the safety of international peace.

“Mr. Groundhog” didn’t know what hit him the other day either when Dot spotted him sitting on the woodpile cleaning his buckteeth.

I happened on the scene while walking to the barn on a mission and caught a glimpse of the little rodent’s wide-eyed surprise as Dot, in her Usain Bolt impression, sprinted across the farm yard in world record time and in a flying leap cleared the wood pile and disappeared behind it taking the groundhog with her. 

Within seconds she bolted back over the woodpile with the mortified groundhog in her fangs. I expect it was experiencing what it felt like for me at the Emo Fair one year when I was thrown about on the “Tilt-a’ Whirl” ride.

The only difference is that I survived the ordeal. In a scene from the movie “The Quick and the Dead” suddenly I had a groundhog carcass to dispose of.

If Dot had had her way, she would have guarded her rodent prize until she was old and grey, and there wasn’t much I could do to distract her from standing over victory other than lock her in the house while I disposed of the critter.

However, as I soon found out, chucking the woodchuck into the bountiful grassland marsh that layers my property here certainly was not the answer.

Two days later while hoeing the garden I looked up to see Dot hovering over the puffy groundhog cadaver in the middle of the yard after she had been on a search and retrieve mission. 

Burying it in the field with a shovel six feet under wearing a “hazmat” suit was my only recourse to preserve the standards of homeland security set by the canine soldier that Dot is.

Often while on a scouting operation to the edges of the farm border, Dot will return black as night with dirt and I know some encroaching gnawing mammal has likely met its maker before it had a chance to set up camp.

Short, sweet, and to the point. 

Listen a little harder to their stories

In his book “Illusions,” Richard Bach penned, “You teach best what you most need to learn.”

I write about a lot of life’s little quirks, home runs, jagged points, and ocean waves. I’m not sure I do this to teach anybody anything.

In fact I write to help heal my life and learn from my somewhat windy journey. However my readers often tell me that what I write about helps them, too. I appreciate their feedback very much.

Today I miss my grandparents, Joe and Florence, who died in 1996 and 2006 respectively.

They made me a very rich woman, though not in the “bullion” sense. And though it be true that I live on the farm where they once did and I am land rich in a smaller sense of the word “acreage,” this also is not the prosperity I now attend to.

I’m talking about the “helping Grandpa in the barn” rich, the “lunch at Grandma’s on Fridays” rich, the “listening to them talk about the past” rich, and “all the lessons about life they taught me,” rich.

I once asked Grandma what she thought the most important life lesson was that she could offer me. She said, “Tell the truth.”

I live by that rule as best I can.

My grandfather taught me not to refer to anyone as “she” or “he,” but to use their proper name. I still am learning to do that.

There are days, though far less frequent than when I first moved to this house, when I come home from town and walk in the door and the smell of  “Juicy Fruit” gum tickles my nostrils and I swear my grandmother’s spirit has been here, checking in to see how things are going.

I always hope she likes what she sees and that the old place still feels like home.

I shake my head at how much time has passed—and seemingly quickly. So much has happened in my life since 2006 and sometimes I feel like I have just begun to live again—and of course once again, I have.

Funny enough I still find myself on a graduating path to change my surroundings to reflect me.

I stepped into a fresh goal path to that end recently, fueled I suppose by the newly shingled roof on this aged farmhouse. Strangely the old white siding, peeling in the sun, was tempered a bit after a 40-year-old scabby roof was made anew. 

So I started to think about changing up color and space and found myself in discovery of cabinet drawers and old trunks that still contained some of the “old world” charms of yesterday. Interesting how that is still possible after six years.

As I was perusing the charisma that spoke to my grandfather’s DNA of keeping everything, such as vintage Massey Ferguson tractor parts boxes stuffed with the old broken piece he’d replaced, I suddenly longed to ask him more about his life as a boy and as a farmer.

I wanted so much to again listen to him talk about the old days of logging the bush with horses and building fires to keep warm on cold winter days. I wanted to ask him all about the barn and what he thought I could do to save it from the winds of time.

I found a rolled up felt pouch lined with countless knitting needles laid carefully by size for the next time my grandmother would have been looking for the one to complete her latest knitting project.

And then there was the sewing kit—a beautiful small wicker box layered on the bottom with buttons, oh the buttons, and filled with old thimbles and darning needles laced with bits of thread from the last repair.

I touched everything in that box and my longing to ask my grandmother about the women who taught her how to quilt and sew, flowed out of my heart. And I wanted to listen again and again to her tell me about how this old house was moved here on a trailer bed in the 1940s.

I wanted to ask both of my grandparents about everything they could remember about their lives, so that I could write down the things I had missed and thus not have so many answered questions.

In his song “Smile As He Goes Home,” Kim Churchill—a most amazing singer/songwriter from Australia who performed at Cornell Farms in mid-June—sang about the importance of the older generation and the value of their legacies and to connect with them before it’s too late.

I did do that with my grandparents and I have much to be thankful for in what they taught me about their lives and how my own has unfolded in their light.

I still wish I had listened a little harder to their stories. Don’t miss your opportunity to do that with the people you love.