The first big exercise of the book is to sketch a map of a place. I chose my oldest hometown, in Pennsylvania. I lived there until around age 8, with that little fish pond behind Mrs. Smith's (no relation) house, the strawberry fields, Sayre's horse barn. As I sketched it out, I led the names of the horses from all those remembered stalls by their oily leather halters. The exact bouquet of hay, oats, and horse manure arose like the flavor of a Madeleine dunked in tea. The dusty yellow clapboard and the cadet-blue shutters of my great-grandmother's house returned. As did young married next-door neighbors Dick and Marleen (Donna?) Briese. I don't know how to spell their name, but I vividly remember Dick carrying me home across the street in his arms in the suburban dark. I was perhaps 3, inconsolable with homesickness. I had black-and-red cowboy boots that I rarely removed and which clunked together with each stride across the dewy grass; I'd been meant to stay overnight as a trial run for them to have children of their own... Anyway, maps. It was a productive half-hour exercise and fun. So my thoughts naturally turned to doing the same activity with the longer novel I am working on.
Perhaps you are a fan of those maps that appear in some historical and fantasy novels –– I usually give them a cursory glance before diving into the story, but I appreciate a little better the effort.
Someone has ruminated on how to illustrate the scope of this new world. They've translated four-dimensional ideas into 2-d ones: a thread of ink to represent a raging river, a star instead of a sprawling metropolis, the little crenelations of a rocky shore. Now, how to hustle my rag-tag band of heroes along to the end of their roads?
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Various navigational challenges suit Spawn ill in making the narrow, twisty track up the St. Marys.
Nor is the 22-foot sloop suited to being pushed or pulled by human labor for the 40-mile walk between the St. Marys and the Suwannee Rivers.
A canoe, they reckoned, can be pretty heavily laden. And both fellas feel relatively comfortable with the inevitable overturnment they can expect in the course of a week or more of adventure on wild rivers.
A canoe felt right. *I just love these nautical double-entendres. (Oh, subconscious, you slay me with the triple!) As an adjective, tender refers to how liable a boat is to heeling over. As a noun, it's that small, accompanying vessel often used to transport people and things from shore to an anchored boat.
The canoe has proven to be fairly stable, comfortable, and easy to move by land or by water. From-the-factory weight was a bare 42 lbs, and Jeff and I easily cruised at 4.5 knots.
And after approximately 20 seconds of consideration, the canoe was christened in honor of our beloved matriarch.
The Miss Patsie then underwent her first Dr. Frankenstein modifications: the addition of parts harvested in the dead of night from the boneyard of broken dreams...
Okay, maybe not in the dead of night. A former windsurfing mast -- cut down and settled into a custom mast-step -- forms both a short mast for a sail (less than 2 square meters per WaterTribe rules) as well as a pull-handle for the long portage. The old-fashioned, newfangled lee-board comes from an Opti, which gave of its centerboard for the cause. It slips over the gunnel and proves remarkably efficient against a cross-wind. In about 18 knots of sidewind, the lee-board kept Miss Patsie on the straight if not narrow. The rudder once graced the stern of an A-cat catamaran. Steering with the rudder is worth another blog.
One of the most daunting legs of the Ultimate Florida Challenge is that 40-mile portage along a country highway. Because our boys will sail and then switch boats, they are not permitted to tow their barky with a bicycle. (Folks who paddle all the way around are allowed to peddle. Bless their callused hearts!)
Instead, Moresailesed and TwoBeers must ride shank's mare along the side of the road. Pushing or pulling or carrying Miss Patsie as they go. Which segues right into the most extreme Frankensteinization of Miss Patsie: wheels.
The last thing anyone expects to do with a brand-spanking-new boat fresh off the factory assembly line is to jab a hole into it. Never mind two holes. But that's how things roll around TwoBeers' laboratory.
He looped Ed Ruark (who desperately needs a WaterTribe name) into the program to consult on the most efficient bike wheels and axel. 27.5 inch road wheels on a 20 mm hub. Because metric plays well with imperial, she said, counting hex wrenches... TwoBeers loaded Miss Patsie onto his van and conveyed her to OH Rodger's boat playground. OH and TwoBeers installed a carbon-fiber tube to hold said axel. With a littleJTR Enterprises millwork, the whole thing rolls pretty smoothly...
In 2015, I stuck a couple of pear trees into the ground without knowing my land very well. As it happens, the soil is thin just there, with bedrock only a short root away. And the wind whistles up and over the little bluff. I imagine it's as bitterly cold a spot in the winter as any I could have found had I been looking for it.
At the end of the summer of 2020, I decided I'd probably cull them come spring. So much of farming is editing, come to think of it: tearing things out and moving them around or having to put them into the discard pile. Sigh. I didn't say anything to the trees –– after all, winter does a lot of my hatchet-work for me. Come spring, however, I pushed a shovel into the dirt around the littler of the two, apologizing as I tussled it from its shallow home. I held the truncated rootball in my hand for a long moment next to the neighboring pear tree. "Look, buddy," I told the tree. "I don't enjoy doing this. I'm going to give you another summer. Think about it, okay?"
Sometimes you have to stop and just wonder. Wait, In complete seriousness: W the actual F? An angel in heaven is advising us to be concerned with (or possibly to find complacent self-satisfaction in) the pursuit of wealth? I stopped going to Sunday school early, but I seem to remember the point of Christianity was -–– not this. I had viral encephalitis as a young person. I woke up in the ICU with my priorities rearranged (I was thenceforth incorrigible at school, since really –– what discipline could compare with the creeping onset of full paralysis and unconsciousness?) and lingering issues with language processing. These five words are parallel to what I sometimes hear when when people are talking. I will hand it to Old Milwaukee for claiming its stake, but does this not beg the question?
He talked about the storms and heat and the nice lady who nearly insisted on calling an ambulance for him. He shared survival tips, like, if you can't get to sleep, you're not tired enough.
He lent guide books and told the guys where they might best employ a fully-rested daylight reconnoiter to save trouble later. Such as the bypass for the Class III whitewater rapids of Big Shoals. They took notes and planned accordingly.
The scouting adventure started in the pre-dawn hours, when I dropped the fellas off at the Fort Clinch boat ramp. They headed upstream (pushed on a flooding tide) toward the Georgia border.
Our planned rendezvous was a little boat-access beach at the Route 17 overpass –– an isolated and frankly sketchy location about 19 nautical miles* away. What is it about waterfront parks that leads to so much graffiti, used condoms, and empty beer containers? Rhetorical question. Discretion being the better part of valor, I betook myself to a cozy coffee shop and hitched up my trusty interwebs machine. All the better to track their progress.
After crisscrossing the Florida-Georgia line an estimated 294 times, we achieved St. George, Georgia. This tiny town is the southernmost named settlement of Georgia and has the happy privilege of marking the start of the Ultimate Florida Challenge's 40 mile portage.
So each time I spell "40 mile portage," it seems like a) a typo, or b) an episode of Alone, wherein our heroes must carry their barque through the woods. Even to me.
But nope. It's c) a roadside slog on a country highway frequented (but not too frequently frequented) by logging trucks.
At the end of the forty miles (37 miles? Who the hell's counting?), one reaches the auspicious village of Fargo, Georgia, population 321 (as of 2010), home of the Stephen C. Foster State Park.
Which is where, naturally, you can get down (way down) upon the Suwannee River.
Sooookay, back to the actual Suwannee river and those –– who knew?! –– a Class III rapids. Big Shoals, by name, visible on satellite maps, and, I am relieved to report, avoidable by a 150-or-so-yard portage to skip the worst of the whitewater (and rocks).
The guys took off from Big Shoals State Park a mile or so upstream of Big Shoals and came ashore seven or so nautical miles* downriver at White Shoals, Florida after walking AROUND the alarming rocks.
They did locate several pieces of landscape in the lesser whitewater of Little Shoals, and the newly named (more anon!) canoe bears a minor scar or two.
Team Spawn gathered enough intel to keep the two sailors chattering all the way back to Jacksonville. Not the least important bit was what culinary delights await them at the distal point of the 40 mile portage...
*Why nautical miles? A nautical mile is first and foremost a minute of latitude. And even though our team is almost never going to go 1.5 land miles without a change in longitude, it's navigational tradition. Training for the Ultimate Florida Challenge adventure race has been ramping up around here. Slowly. We all know how long it takes to recover from a simple bout of tendonitis. Over the summer at the Farm, Captain TwoBeers hiked a few miles every morning (minus a couple of lay-days for fishing and sailboat racing), and each week we tried for at least one tandem kayak trip. The tandem boat is an excellent addition to our summers. Instead of tethering my kayak shamefully to Jeff's when the mileage on my hinky shoulder is up, I've got built-in rescue propulsion. AND it feels like I am contributing to his fitness regimen. Each time I set down my paddle and pick up the camera, the binocs, the Googlemaps, it's for the Spawn team effort. I'm not just dreamily contemplating the scenery, dang it, I'm coaching. But as summer passed, we stepped up. Jeff hunted down and ordered a racing canoe made of Kevlar®. The supply-chain kinks felt palpable as the small factory in Wisconsin kept us apprised of when/if they were able to start building again. Our faith in capitalism was rewarded when a nice fella drove up in his truck and unloaded the as-yet-unnamed canoe one sunny October day. Thanks to the advice of young Chip Clifton, the team will be using kayak paddles on the canoe –– a seemingly small distinction, but one that should save mileage on everyone's hinky shoulders. So while Moresailesaid and TwoBeers are working on their physical stamina and paddling skills, as well as sailing all sorts of boats in all sorts of events, I am thinking about the ground-control challenges. It's an unsupported adventure race, which means that between stages, our heroes are on their own. They can stay at hotels if they want (they won't, but they could), or eat at a fancy restaurant along the way (they might, weather dictating). And at the end of each stage, I can meet up with them, replenish their supplies, usher them into hot showers, et cetera. There will be a lot of road to cover chasing the team, which also translates into a lot of tourist-y opportunity for me. Fort Clinch, for instance, is a race check-in point, and ALSO where they switch from sailing Spawn to paddling the as-yet-unnamed canoe. What did I know about Fort Clinch? Absolutely nothing. I might guess it's a former military outpost, probably historical, possibly a good spot for making out. A few clicks later, and I know the fort was first started in around 1847, and it has a bit of a tradition of being not ready for the conflicts that come its way. It was restored by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s (Ooh, I wonder if Grampa Navy worked on it? Note to self: research employment records for the CCC). And it's right next to Amelia Island. Huh. That leg of my road-trip just planned itself. NOTE:
The Ultimate Florida Challenge begins on the first Saturday in March at sunrise at Fort Desoto beach. Depending on what time a person keeps, either the clock is ticking or the drums are calling... <Insert sound of fife and drum> Does anyone else see a saluting soldier sporting a tricorn hat? Respect from above the treeline.
This day was formerly known as Armistice Day, marking the end of the "war to end all wars" back in 1918.
After some thought, we decided against doing our own concrete work. The guys managed to dig, gravel, and move the concrete by wheelbarrow from where the 'rete truck backed into Jeff's velvet field of green in a single day. (PS, it took us only a week or so to fill those ruts and overseed the area with clover. The scars on the field are nearly invisible.
So steps.
I meant to just put a couple of flagstones into the ground, but then the stones started piping up and the hill was asking for more... Foodies have "amuse-bouche." Readers have flash fiction. Writers make up little stories about whatever comes to hand. She wasn't Betty Boop, not exactly, though that unsettling glint in her eye suggested she warn't no Campbell Soup kid.
She'd maintained an over-the-shoulder flirtation with any old observant gaze for –– let me count this out –– more than 75 years. Didn't a glamorous little thing like her just get tired of her role? Didn't she want to shake out her hair, shrug those shoulders square, and frown from time to time? At least she was out of the closet. Nobody likes to spend a lifetime –– a literal lifetime, if you do the depressing math –– holding on in the dark. And whether she was the vivacious creature she appeared, or if, like Jessica Rabbit, she was just painted that way, that face made it harder to shut a bifold door. So she there she hung in the window. Peeping. A coquette such as she must peep, surely. With that coy, art-deco fan of cloth –– a peignoir draped over her shoulder, I think with matching wee mirabou mules on her off-screen baby feet. Maybe seven decades gave a gal perspective along with a few chips and pallor. She might have burned as wooden matches, or splintered as a chair polished by generations of school-children's sit-upons. She could have backed a mirror or a dresser drawer. She might have moldered in an attic or ended in a bin. Instead, she waited liminal, looking in. A few characterless companions for company. The time passes. It's getting to be that time of year -- when we return to the ongoing adventures of Captain TwoBeers and Moresailesaid, on board their strange and mighty steed, Spawn. As many of you readers know, each March brings the Everglades Challenge, which is an unsupported, human-powered adventure race of some 300+ miles along the left coast of Florida. Vessels of astonishing diversity push off the beach at Fort DeSoto at dawn on the first Saturday in March and make their various ways south and across the Everglades to Key Largo, Florida. My favorite skipper built his own boat, a 21-foot-long light-weight, shallow-drawing sloop for this event, with help and a design from the cool OH Rodgers, plus the assistance of a village of friends. Over the past few years, sailing Spawn, TwoBeers and Jahn Tihansky (Moresailesaid) set a course record, spent time upside down in the Gulf, rowed for days, and punted on the last leg. After half a dozen of these challenges, our Spawnsters aren't bored, but they are ready to expand their challenge. So in March 2022, the guys will attempt the Ultimate Florida Challenge. What is the Ultimate Challenge? Just a lot more sleep-deprived, salt-encrusted, navigationally puzzling ooey-gooey goodness! Spawn will (knock wood) depart as usual from the beach, but instead of ending in Key Largo, their race will continue for another 900 miles, up the right side of the state, across the top of Florida, and then back to the beach where it started. 1200 miles in a small boat. Wheeee! The big twist? Once they approach the Georgia border, they'll switch out of Spawn and into a canoe. (I know! Jeesh!). There's a long paddle through narrow and skinny water (possibly less skinny, but still narrow, depending on the preceding weeks' rainfall. There's even some Class III whitewater.), which prohibits both Spawn's mast and her generous width. The event's rules permit sailors to transform into paddlers mid-race, as it were, and, naturally, requests they change back when the course permits...which will happen AFTER the 40-mile portage. Forty miles! Pushing their canoe! On a country highway! Wheeeee! Training started this past summer. This will be a world of difference from the two-day sprint of past Challenges. The team's goal is to get it done. In under three weeks. Myself, I'll keep fingers crossed and hope for a good weather window.
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