Strange Days Have Found Us
I have been on and off boats all my life. I learned young and was driving alone, long before I was technically allowed to. My sister and I learned in a Boston Whaler skiff with nothing but a compass. It was and is a great little boat. Boating in Maine comes with its own host of cautions, ledges that appear seemingly from nowhere and fog, THICK fog, that seems to swallow you whole.
Boating in the fog is exhilarating and terrifying all at once. Most boats today have GPS and radar to help them find their way and alert them of other boats in the area. When I was a kid, we didn’t have that. My parents would send me off to town in the whaler with nothing but a compass and a chart. It is just what we did.
When this cover photo came up in my memories on Facebook this week I was reminded of that time in my life. I learned a lot about myself from boating. I learned hard-skills like how to drive a boat, how to read a chart, and navigate using only a compass but I also learned to trust my intuition. Until you’ve been on a boat in the fog, it is difficult to understand just how disorienting it can be. If you’re not careful you can quite literally just go in circles. Things jump out at you in the fog too. You can be putting along at a respectable pace, only to have another boat suddenly appear next to you. It is eerie and unsettling. Still, you get through it and make it to your destination.
In a way, I feel like this photo symbolizes where so many of us are right now. With millions of us locked away in our homes, life looks nothing like it did just a month or two ago. Our schedules and routines have been turned upside-down and our plans put on hold. Anthony and I are no strangers to this phenomenon either. Between trips, pasta workshops, road trips, and races, our lives look nothing like I had anticipated. I feel like I am stuck in a fog on a daily basis now.
Just like when in a boat, however, I know our destination is coming, and if we stick to our tools, resources, sound judgment, and intuition, we will make it through this fog as well.
