The Gift of Seeing

Lady's Slipper Orchid
Cypripedium guttatum
Unalaska Island

There seems to be a perverted connection in our new world culture between "busyness" and "happiness."  We link "frenzy" with "success," filling our days churning out proliferating quantities of activity - all in a frantic pursuit of that illusive horizon.  We're upset if the commuter in front of us is traveling too slow; it interferes with our "production."  Our lives become one endless train of events, each one simply a link to the next, our steps becoming a never ending chain stretching into our future with the fading hope of one day obtaining a reward.

 Grave markers, Dutch Harbor

I think that is why sailing as well as working with traditional hand tools can become so appealing.  They both offer a forced curriculum where the participant can learn a new perception of time - a lesson where finally the eyes and heart can be opened to the moment.   Robert Cushman Murphy, a naturalist aboard a whaling ship in the early 1900's, writes sympathetically about this lack of seeing among his fellow crewmen while becalmed in the Sargasso Sea: 

"Why, after all, should these equatorial children take delight in the experiences that will somehow carry me through until you and I are once again together?  Their comfort is far less than mine, their work more arduous, their privacy nil.  In the face of unfamiliar food, they remember only their palmiest days ashore.  Hope of money, all too likely to dim with experience, is their sole lure.  Their thoughts and desires are centered on whales - whales and a port.  They follow the calling not for its own sake, but only for what it may bring - the lay, one-hundredth, one hundred-and-fiftieth, one two-hundredth, or whatever the humble cut may be.  They are poor observers of things in general.  Living creatures interest them when they can eat them or boil them down to oil, but they are as unconcerned with the dazzling plunge of a tropic-bird as with the glowing, luminescent waters of a Caribbean evening.  Sunsets, and the constellations of night skies, they do not appear to see.  Perhaps their first thought of a star will come when the Daisy, her hold filled, turns her bow away from the southern ocean.  Then we shall all be gazing nightly toward the line until changeless Polaris pops up to guide us home."  (p. 11, Logbook for Grace,Time Life books, 1947)

Petersburg, Alaska

The subtle difference between Murphy and his shipmates is in the emphasis of what the moment could do to them instead of what it could do for them.  Quietness and solitude have very little to offer the mind seeking another notch in the belt of individual profiteering, but the heart longing to be changed will find the moment of stillness invaluable.

Midnight Sun Cafe, Anchorage

Because the true reward is always before us now, not in tomorrow.

Projects Outside the Workshop

One of the lingering benefits from our sailing experience has been the appreciation and satisfaction that comes from being self sufficient.  Our boat was completely able to operate "off the grid" and many weeks could pass before we would need to find a port to re-provision with supplies or water.  We would supplement our supplies with fishing and berries while in remote areas, and simple repairs were done with supplies on hand.  Major failures were either "jury rigged" or done without until proper repairs could be made in port.  This independent style of living brought a lot of satisfaction in the knowledge that we could look after ourselves.


This desire for self sufficiency continues to impact how I continue to live on land and that feeling of independence is a major part of the satisfaction I enjoy when completing a project.  Not everything I need requires a trip to the store - often the materials are readily available and simple - and the supplies we do purchase tend to be more of the basics and less of the processed or finished product.  This last weekend was no exception - and the satisfaction just as real as any project I've churned out in the workshop - even though this one came from the kitchen.

My grandmother is reputed to have said that "no-one will ever starve as long as they keep a sack of beans stored in the attic."  Whether she actually did keep any stashed away is unknown, but her words ring true.  Simple provisions - rice, beans, TVP, flour - can provide the basics for many meals and are easily stored for long periods provided they remain dry.  This weekend's project was tackling one of those provisions; one we enjoy keeping stocked in our "attic."

The recipe I use is adapted from Mennonite's Country-Style Recipes by Esther H. Shank (Harold Press, 1987):

8 cups beans, soaked overnight and cooked for 1 hr in same water, drained, reserving liquid
1 lb bacon, cut into small pieces
2 onions, chopped
1 cup brown sugar
3 cups ketchup
1/2 cup molasses
4 Tbsp prepared mustard
4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Mix well along with 4 cups of the reserved bean liquid, fill pint jars and process in pressure canner 75 min at 10 lbs pressure.

There's just something extremely satisfying with a well stocked shelf filled with jars you've prepared yourself.

Even if it did happen in the kitchen.

The Beginner Mind of Woodworking

Alvah Simons comments on the patience of the Inuit people.  He writes

"...the patience of the Inuit are legendary.  Their minds and bodies move to longer rhythms than those of temperate-zone peoples.  Their coming of dawn is measured not in hours but in months.  Their days last great portions of a year and so their nights, not neatly balanced in diurnal convenience.  In their storms, to press on is to perish; one must wait, remaining always subserviant to the cruel forces of nature, moving when and how allowed.  In the Arctic, one must be bold but never brash, a lesson I might yet learn.  There one needs endless acceptance of what is, spending little time in a world of what was, or what might be.  It is the "beginner mind" of Zen teachings."  (p. 14, North to the Night, 1998 Broadway Books)

Almost ten years ago I left my fast paced, frantic, crisis managing position to find a simpler, saner life on 35 feet of sailing fiberglass that was tied at the time to a rickety dock on the Fraser River in the lower mainland of British Columbia.  The journey that began with that fateful decision to move aboard began a long, difficult and often painful pilgrimage of self discovery, for in the end the worst person you take with you is yourself.

Sailing northern waters soon teaches you that the wind and the sea are two indiscriminate forces that think little of our own agendas and schedules, and the person that learns to bob and weave with the changes is not only the happiest and most content but can often literally be the only one left standing.  This clashed directly with my operational mindset; a mindset that was deeply rooted from years of cultural indoctrination.  It was a tough transition from the city rat-race to one of patience and acceptance; shaking and moving to sitting in silence.  Gradually the new, softer me began to evolve with each day spent contemplatively in the cockpit.

Lack of space prevented us from keeping most of our possessions, and those items we did bring aboard were few and practical.  My tool inventory took a substantial hit, and what was left fit neatly in three, small, rectangular boxes.  A new appreciation of hand tools was born.  My workshop became any available dock-space and my supplier became whatever materials I could salvage or buy within walking distance of the harbor.  Life was radical and the change scary, yet deep inside I felt the comforting stirrings of something significant coming to life.


I've never looked back.  Though I confess we no longer live on a boat, those years aboard were years I wouldn't trade for anything.  Those years taught me the patience I needed to wait for circumstances to change, which they almost always inevitably did.  They also taught me to allow myself the flexibility to change course midway, and be OK with that.  Not everything we planned to do needed to turn out the way we envisioned.  The years aboard also taught me that consumerism doesn't bring happiness; contentedness does.  I learned to love the journey as well as the destination.  The moments spent in community and conversation were never wasted.  And the moment was something to be celebrated; the past was gone forever in our wake, and we never knew what lay around the next corner.

Those lessons continue to come back to me when I am now puttering on my shop stool fashioning some material into something I find useful or beautiful.  The process of the moment becomes something to treasure along with the end product.  Every step can become a project in itself, and the joy of seeing my labors slowly become a creation is more rewarding than all the toys and accomplishments I accumulated in my old life or in any of the people I see trapped in the clatter of the world around me.  It's all artificial contrivance and chaos, and every day I become a little more thankful for another opportunity I have to spend one more moment in quiet solitude, allowing my tools to teach me a little more of patience, contentment, and acceptance of what is.

For ultimately it's simply
"all a matter of becoming who we already are."  
Fr. Richard Rohr