CONVERSATIONS
with a Hypoxic Dog (CwHD)
is a weblog about words and language and other inanities. CwHD began
May 1, 2017. The Bookstore opened in July, 2017, providing an
overview of my published work. Print and ebook copies are available
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CwHD
92
(A
glossary of archaic or uncommon words is added at the end of the
essay.)
Slack
Water and the Crinoids of Chomolungma
For all of us, mountains turn into
images after a short time and the images turn true. Gold-tossed waves
change into the purple backs of monsters, and so forth. Always
something out of the moving deep, and nearly always oceanic.1
Can
buoys, green in color, six to nine feet in diameter, as tall as
twenty feet, can weigh several tons. The Owner had decided to follow
the green cans across the bar and stood by the forward shrouds
directing traffic. The Cabin Boy, Mozzo by name, manned the helm. The
two men might have been friends ...
A
four or five foot swell, rather benign, provided a bit of spice. The
boat, a 41 foot ketch designed by William Garden, wallowed about,
struggling up the steep face of wind waves, motoring, slamming into
troughs, the tide making. The boat, stuffed to bursting with the
Owner's toys, was taking him, his dog, and his family on vacation.
Mozzo and the dog had come along for the first part of the journey,
delivering the boat to Victoria where the family would join the
Owner. The family, apparently, wanted no part of the voyage up the
coast.
The
helm was sluggish, and Mozzo, in his inexperience, became anxious.
Just off Peacock Spit, the Owner suddenly thrust out his right arm,
pointing, and yelled, “Turn.” The dog, a Norwegian elkhound,
barked.
Mozzo
cranked the wheel to the right.
“The
other way,” screamed the Owner, arms waving. The dog stood on the
gunnel peering over the combing. He looked at Mozzo and barked.
Twice.
And
so Mozzo cranked the wheel back the other way. The Owner had pointed
at the green can buoy coming just a whisker off their bow. Mozzo
saw it then, close to, bobbing down the starboard side, a near miss.
Not the most auspicious start to the voyage.
Three
miles out, ten miles up the coast, still motoring, the ketch decided
it had had enough and stopped. The sudden quiet was unnerving. They
drifted a bit. Mozzo suggested sails, but with little or no wind the
suggestion was ill received. Besides, the sails had not been out of
their covers in years. The Owner motored; he chose not to sail.
Mozzo
sat at the lifeless helm watching the Washington coast bob up and
down. Willapa Bay, he reckoned, off there to starboard. Japan, off
there to port. The Owner on his hands and knees down below, cursing,
as he tinkered with fuel lines and filters; but the ketch adamantly
refused to cooperate. The dog sat on the stern sheets watching gulls
lift and turn and mewl. They drifted.
“Call
the Coast Guard,” suggested Mozzo.
“Shut
up,” retorted the Owner.
Time
passed. The Long Beach peninsula continued its up and down, the
purple hills beyond provided a backdrop at once maudlin and sublime.
The mizzen boom rolled to starboard then back to port, giving the
winches a good bang each time. Though frustrated with the failure of
his motor, untoward anxiety, edginess, also marked the Owner's face.
He cursed. A box wrench was flung through the companionway into the
gentle heave of sea. The boom swung to port. The boom swung back.
Thump.
The
dog went below. He hopped onto the settee, sat and considered the
Owner.
"What?"
said the Owner.
The
dog turned and curled up in the corner. He sighed.
Damn
it, yelled the Owner.
Raised
eyebrows from Mozzo. Definitely out of sorts, he thought. More than
the situation warranted. He wondered, knowing the fellow's history,
what goodies might be stashed aboard. Did he fear having the
federales on board?
Reluctantly,
the Owner called the Coast Guard for assistance. They waited in
silence. The dog slept. The Coast Guard arrived, a stout line looped
the ketch's samson post and off they went. They crossed back over the
bar which was, of course, a milk pond. Mozzo thought he might easily
canoe this glassy expanse. Well timed, this rescue. Slack water.
Trail
Dog
Between
ebb and flow is slack. Not always a milk pond, but usually quite
benign. For the businessman, slack is a slow period. For a climber, a
loose bit of rope. Also, the dictionary tells us, the word suggests
negligence. The link below is to a video that is not about ocean, but
about ocean's obverse which is mountain. The Euclidean
perspective (a hairball best left to mathematicians, but useful in
this context) suggests that all space is unique yet comparable. Its
otherness lies in its nature.2
Many mountains were once sea floor; much of the seafloor was once
mountains.
Slack
features prominently in the short film. The contention made in "Trail
Dog" that happiness is beyond good and guilt is almost so.
Almost. But beyond happiness and its opposite,which is sorrow, beyond
all dualities, is what I chose to label Slack Water. Slack Water is a
place as well as a state of mind. It is where animals---dogs and
cats, deer and whales---live. That is, if the animal in question has
not been too domesticated. Slack Water is what humans---especially
those who are out of sorts---seek. Slack water, to all who know the
tides, gives a tangible image for an abstract concept.
No
words can adequately describe that which is beyond all dualities. The
term offered here merely suggests the complete integration that lies
beyond concepts. The film linked below is narrated, and the words are
well written and compliment the images equally well. But it is the
images themselves which tell the story. The Runner and his friends
are beyond mischief, happiness, dancing Slack Water.
A
story is one medium for explicating the difficulties of concepts. A
film is able to provide visual information to fill in the blanks.
Ultimately, humans, with their limited ability to see beyond the end
of their noses, must be moved by some epiphanic occurrence
and then expand themselves, physically and mentally, to find Slack
Water, and so become their obverse.
Glossary
Chomolungma,
Tibetan name for Mt Everest (K15)
crinoids,
marine fossils some of which can be found on the summit of
Chomolungma. See website linked here (
https://www.volcanocafe.org/fossils-of-mount-everest/
) for more information
epiphantic,
an intuitive perception or insight, usually unexpected, into the
reality or essential meaning of something, usually triggered by some
commonplace occurrence or experience.
obverse,
the counterpart of a fact or truth.
1Norman
Maclean, A River Runs Through It (The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1976), 144.
2The
tallest mountain on the planet is Mauna Kea, Hawaii, at 33,000 feet
from its underwater base to its summit.
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