Level Ground

I meant to start early but, I didn't, reading the world news instead, war, earthquake and greed. More greed than one could imagine could exist. It threatens to spin me into the abyss, and so it is time to go, because the canoe always returns to level ground.


As I head out northwesterly across the dead lake, I think of my spiral metaphor for life. The idea that one can spiral in, or one can spiral out. The broken people that one meets in later life are often the spiraling in variety. The world is against them as they spiral into a dark place. They spin off friends, they soon cannot be reached. It is a place of hate and fear. Spiraling out, on the other hand, is a constant exploration of life. One picks up friends like a magnet, friends who are also spiraling out. The world expands, the wonders never cease. It can be a scary place to go, but it is, in the long run, always a rewarding trip.

I'm heading to the salt water today. A trip planned, as much as I ever plan, through the locks and around the peninsula. I pass under two drawbridges and the wind begins to blow from the west. It is enough wind that out on the open water of the Salish Sea, I would be put to hard work, and maybe too hard.

the black one is the Speedwell, a ship of age

And so I turn around, because there is always something for me to explore back where I came from. Always something to learn in the smallest of places. The weather service predicted east winds (the reason I headed to the salt water) arrive as I cross the north end of the dead lake. Portage Bay, a body of calm in almost any wind, is not. The crossing under place is worse. It takes at least 20 minutes for me to force my way through that concrete canal while people walking on the shore easily outpace me.

birches of the beaver forest

It seems that the weather is blowing me homeward. Weather has a good sense of timing, for when I get out of the canoe, in the south lagoon, I find the ground as level as could be.