{"id":7539,"date":"2010-05-21T11:46:21","date_gmt":"2010-05-21T15:46:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=7539"},"modified":"2018-10-20T14:55:34","modified_gmt":"2018-10-20T18:55:34","slug":"in-the-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/in-the-water\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Water"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[For information about this photo, called “Weeki Wachee Spring, Florida,”
\nsee the Note<\/strong><\/a> at the bottom of this post.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Adrift<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let my dreams while I’m wide-awake
\nloose. Let me be drowned, bap\u00adtized,
\nin the light given me. Day comes around,
\nnight, fall, win\u00adter, spring,
\nsum\u00admer. Leaves over\u00adhead, under\u00adfoot.
\nWaves arrive, buf\u00adfets from friends
\noffended, ene\u00admies. Let it all come:
\nthis is my way, this is the canoe I’m in.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(William Stafford [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>…<\/p>\n

Mom\u2019s Canoe<\/strong><\/p>\n

Do you remember your old canoe?
\nWooden wide-bellied, tapered ends
\nmade to slip through tight river bends
\nswiftly, like shadow.
\nHull ribbed delicately, wing of bird
\nSometimes seen, never heard when it flew
\nthrough the water more glider than boat,
\nponderous in portage, weightless afloat.
\nFrail origami, vessel of air,
\nwide shallow saucer suspended where
\nshallows met shadows near the old dam.
\nRemember how it glowed like honey in summer
\nrubbed with beeswax and turpentine
\nagainst leaks, cracks, weather and time.
\nAll your housekeeping went into that canoe,
\nthen you rode high, bow lifted,
\narced up like flight, all magic, power,
\nevening light. You j-stroking,
\nside-slipping, eddying out, frugal
\nwith movement, all without effort,
\njust like you walked and ran.
\nI still see you rising from water to sky,
\npaddle held high,
\nriver drops limning its edge.
\nBrown diamonds catch the light as you lift, then dip.
\nParting the current, you slip
\nsilently through the evening shadows.
\nYou, birdsong, watersong, slanting light,
\nfollowing river bend, swallowed from sight.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Rebecca Foust [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

And (the author is learning about the perils of life in the Merchant Marine)…:<\/p>\n

Andy once said to me, “I love being up on the bridge when it’s rough. I enjoy being on watch in rough weather. It’s so impressive. It’s spectacular. Huge seas. Strong winds. At some point, you cross from awe to terror. I haven’t been at that point yet — the ultimate storm. It could change my attitude.” Andy hasn’t seen anything worse than a fifty-five-foot sea breaking over him when he was running coastwise on the Spray<\/em> in the winter North Atlantic. “My height of eye was fifty-two feet off the water, and the water broke over the bridge and hit the radar mast. Water went down stacks into the engine room.” Not enough water to change his attitude.<\/p>\n

That wave was what the Mariners Weather Log<\/em> calls an ESW, or Extreme Storm Wave — a rogue wave, an overhanging freak wave. Coincidence tends to produce such waves — for example, when the waters of colliding currents are enhanced by tidal effects in the presence of a continental shelf. Often described as “a wall of water,” an Extreme Storm Wave will appear in a photograph to be a sheer cliff of much greater height than the ship from which the picture was taken. Captain Washburn calls it “a convex wave.” He goes on to say, “You don’t get up it before it’s down on your foredeck. The center is above sixty feet high. You can’t ride over the center. You can ride over the edge. A ship has no chance if the wave hits just right. It will break a ship in two in one lick. Because of the trough in front of it, mariners used to say that they fell into a hole in the ocean.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(John McPhee, Looking for a Ship<\/em> [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

And:<\/p>\n

Many years ago The Boy had been warned away from the river by his parents. His father had threatened him with a sentence beginning, “If I ever, ever<\/em> catch you down there…” and ending with a phrase whose exact contents did not matter, since all such phrases always promised total annihilation. “A dragon lives there,” said his mother, more fancifully.<\/p>\n

This dragon, The Boy imagined, was long and undulant, its silver skin scaly and iridescent; its head looked like an automobile hood ornament, steely and unforgiving. There would be a splash as it surfaced when adults (but never their children) were present, and it would glare at them with its red, hungry eyes, projecting telepathic thoughts at them like Bring me your children<\/em>. It would look at The Boy’s own parents and add, Yours first<\/em>. Whenever there had been a so-called drowning, whispered, half-overheard adult conversations hinted at the truth: “…draggin’ the river,” the adults would say.<\/p>\n

For that matter, what was it with this stupid fascination with immersing your body in water, anyhow? Talk about unnatural! The Boy had once read a fantasy story, set in the distant future, in which the human race were “returning to the sea” to live. The author noted the way the hair grew on people’s backs in convergent tufts, clearly indicating (like waving fields of seaweed) the flow of the water which (so he said) we had left for land centuries ago.<\/p>\n

The Boy laughed at the idea when he wasn’t worrying about it. He tried to imagine his forebears — his grandparents, say, graceless on land, hobbling about on pale thin legs and bunions the size of cupcakes — leaping up-river like salmon or crawling out of the bay to balance beachballs on their noses. Ridiculous<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(JES)<\/p>\n

Finally: in this area, the old Creature from the Black Lagoon<\/em> horror films are regarded with something like tongue-in-cheek reverence. Some scenes were shot at nearby Wakulla Springs<\/a> (a\/k\/a Edward Ball State Park), and The Missus distinctly remembers portions being filmed in the ocean off Jacksonville when she was but a mere slip of a girl. The video below was offered up to the gods of YouTube as a posthumous tribute to Ben Chapman, the actor who played The Creature in the scenes shot on land.<\/p>\n