On The Water

I hear thunder coming. I knew it would. An hour ago, I sat at the water’s edge, looking past the mouth of the Rappahannock into the Chesapeake Bay beyond. A wonderful strong, humid breeze was sweeping the wisps of my gossamer hair across my sticky face, and I repeatedly swept them from my eyes.

I saw not a boat on the 2-mile-wide river, neither up nor down river, and I thought “What an incredible day for a ‘woohoo’ sail!” A woohoo sail, of course is one where you’re running with the water lapping your gunwale, mast tilting to the maximum safe angle, and everyone onboard is leaning out windward. And the smiling woman at the tiller (yours truly) is yelling, “WoooooHoooo” into the wind as it dries her exposed teeth.

I miss that.

With sadness, I wondered if all that is ahead of me is to remember that, or if somehow the joy will be restored to me of holding the tiller under my knee, the mainsail and jib sheets in one hand, and a refreshing beverage in the other. Of course, my manservant will be preparing cheese or oysters on crackers, and carefully feeding them to me. Yep. Happy memories.

Sitting by the water on the riprap that secures the bank at the edge of Waterman’s Park…. There are waves on the river, sometimes even whitecaps, in storms. When I tell people the water here is saltwater and tidal, they correct me by calling it “brackish.” Trust me, it’s salty. This far down the river, it is not freshwater. The creek I live on is not freshwater and it doesn’t resemble a stream. It is a small navigable bay with green water and tides that rise and fall. A few times a year we have flood tides that rise above our docks, or that fall so low half the muddy muck of the bottom is exposed, and it’s got the stench of marsh gas. My creek is protected from the wind. If you see whitecaps on Perkins Creek, you might get blown off your feet several yards away standing on the shores of the river.

Water and waves, splashes and breezes, the songs of gulls, terns, osprey, and great blue heron; these are the songs that are better than any church hymn. Sometimes you can even catch the undulating chorus of a pod of dancing dolphins, or skate flying, their great flapping fins just barely breaking the surface.

The water of life reflects the heavens when it is still, and echoes the wind, the rumbling, the calls of people and creatures across its expanses.

I watch and I recall 1966, learning to sail on Larkin Pond in something resembling a bathtub with a single sail, a daggerboard, and a tiller. We also learned to canoe there at Camp Hoffman in Rhode Island. Larkin Pond was small, still, and landlocked, perfect for terrified beginners who were learning how to enjoy falling in and what to do in a capsizing. It was good.

The next summer, before it was developed as today, we sailed Point Judith Pond. We had larger boats, Tall Stars, which, unlike our starter boats, had jibs. We made our way from brackish Ram Point, in Upper Pond where the boats were moored, out into Point Judith Harbor at Jerusalem. Sailing out into the sea with only the man-made breakwater between us and the endless Atlantic was both terrifying and exhilarating.

But even when not out on a boat, I lived a short, empty block, literally a 90-second walk from my back door to the rocky shore near the mouth of Narragansett Bay. I had to scramble down a cliff to reach the beach. That water was cold, even in July and August, and loud, breaking over the smooth tumbling, rolling rocks. It was there that I taught myself to skip stones, excited to count how many times one skipped before disappearing into the cold steel-gray water.

I never saw a cruise ship sail in. Those enormous, floating cities were still decades away from being built. I’d see the Block Island Ferry head out of the bay. I’d watch the crossing and recrossing of the two ferries that ran between Newport and Jamestown. Mostly, I watched the Navy ships coming and going; destroyers, submarines, and, OH MY, the occasional aircraft carrier! That was the biggest ship I could ever have imagined. The large oil tankers were impressive, too. Then, I’d wait long minutes for the crashing waves of the wake to reach the shore. In the summer, with great flourish, in time for the America’s Cup trials, there would be the most stupendous parade of gleaming tall ships coming into harbor. The first time I saw the Coast Guard’s Eagle, it took my breath away, white and gleaming with all of the cadets lined up in dress uniform standing at attention at the rails. I was in love!

After being dragged away from Newport in the summer of 1969, life just was never the same. At Quantico the Potomac River was so thick with algae and dead fish that I renamed it the Pot O’Muck. Walking down to see the marina at the end of the street in Q-Town was just too sad to make it a habit. The saving grace at Quantico was Lunga Reservoir. You could rent a boat there, or take your own canoe and paddle around the reservoir to various hidden forested places for little romantic interludes (we were high school seniors, after all). Swimming was forbidden, but somehow we always managed to fall, or push each other, out of the boats.

Later, living in Lynchburg, VA for 35 years, although it was built on the James River, the river was not legally accessible to the populous as train tracks ran along it. You could be arrested for crossing those tracks, not to mention being hit by a freight train. There was no recreational development there, and really no place to sit and enjoy it. Also remember, at that point, the James is a mountain river, rushing downstream, shallow, rocky, and full of twists, turns, and snags.

Streams and running creeks are well and good, but to find the waters of life there, you had to go hiking in the mountains and find a nice waterfall to enjoy. But that required a special trip and a fairly long drive. Beautiful, but just not the same.

Finally moving to Urbanna, VA felt something like a homecoming with the harbor and the sailboats. It’s not Newport, but it’s very, very good. You can sail out into the Chesapeake Bay, to Tangier or Smith Island, or cross over to Onancock on the Eastern Shore. Maybe I’ll get to do these things again. But I still miss the fog horns and basso ships’ whistles of Newport.

If at some point my children decide to send their decrepit old mother to some Old Folks Home out of sight and sound of living waters, I think I might as well just die. Maybe I’ll just have to outlive them. But, that doesn’t sound very good; does it?