Black Heron

It’s not that Michael Waters really dug summer camp, but it was an escape from home-life and school life, and at this camp he got to sail. He’d taken to sailing like breathing last year and picked it right back up in the past few days. He felt the mastery of repeated good practice. He felt urgent about going out to read the wind and water. He belonged out there. In such command of his skill, he resented the thought of some 22-year-old ‘counselor’ directing his work, yet rule #1 was you don’t even go swimming without adults present, never mind boating. The Sunfishes were moored off shore at anchored platforms anyway; hard just get to them without being noticed.

Michael wanted to call himself a captain, a real pilot. That would mean successfully taking a boat out and bringing it back, with himself and the boat intact, on his own. in order to do this, here, now, he’d have to steal a boat. Was it worth the consequences if he got caught? Well you know what, he thought, that’s just not an option. He would check to see if this was a night they’d let the sails remain unfurled. It did seem fairly calm out, today, but you never knew. He’d have to leave things exactly as he found them once he was done, and he was not about to take extra seconds and make noise out in the open getting a sail re-wrapped and sheathed. Those snaps were difficult even if you got the canvas nice and tight, anyway. He looked forward to the dead hours after midnight, seemingly 100 years away.

But the time finally arrived, of course, so. Stealthily now, he padded out from the cabin and down the wide dirt path toward the shore. Everyone had long since hit the sack. He went over things in his head. So far, if he ran in to an adult he’d say something like, ‘Just on my way to the showers, counselor’. He imagined getting challenged:

“What are you doing in your trunks.”

Well, what do you think, I sleep in flannel jammies or somethin’? I’m 14 man. I gotta put something on to come down here.

Once past the restrooms:

“What are you doing down here?”

Just seeing if Cook’s up, see if he’s got any coffeecake.

Once by the fire pit:

“You’re not supposed to be in this area!”

Okay man. And abort mission.

Caught past the mess tent or on the beach:

God I think I lost my shades/tags/something down here…

“Get back to your cabin!”

Okay man, on my way. And abort mission. Okay.

He got all the way past the mess tent and just to the picnic tables - Yes! The sails were unfurled - when Rob the Cook happened. Rob. He hated Michael not especially or personally, but on general principle. He dutifully despised all children under the age of 27. Rob was a wiry, sneering ex-con, with old corpse-blue tattoos fading into each other like a hairy traffic problem. His brows scrunched down to his nose even when wildly happy. He had more hair on one arm than he did on his whole big head. But he smelled like the kitchen and walked somehow like a bad-ass movie star, and he made one hell of a cream cheese coffeecake. And that’s what really counted. All the boys were in a sort of wary awe of this unlikely source of food. You liked him or you didn’t, but you probably didn’t want to cross him.

Without even thinking (he didn’t have time), Michael waved almost tersely at Rob, like yeah man, so shoot me. I’m a kid standing here where I’m not supposed to be, what. Happily shocked by his own attitude, he thought hey, maybe dealing with Rob this way was so crazy it just might work. He whipped his index finger to his mouth, shh! Glad he was a good distance away, he really caught and held Rob’s eyes:

Watch me, Rob. Just wait, and watch me, and I’ll make it worth your while. I dare you to stay still and quiet and if you do, you’ll end up with some respect for me, and I’ll definitely respect you.

Rob stayed still for a moment, then cocked his head to one side. In a feat of heavy lifting, he tented his brow.

Okay, what? Whatcha got for me, boy?

Michael whipped around and raced in silent barefoot over the semi-rocky beach and into the water. He swam like a demon eel to the south platform where the red Sunfish was moored. He hoisted himself up, not even bothering with the ladder, and took careful note of the orientation of the 22 foot Sunfish; he wanted to re-moor it precisely as he found it now. What if the last guy to moor it was the first guy back out using this boat? You recognize your own work.

He slipped his little vessel away from the dock easily and quietly, nothing to it. He had long since set his short, simple course, just slingshot around Heron Island and right back to the dock.

If you looked due west from the beach, Heron was just over a mile out and to your far right, NNW. It was just big and hospitable enough, terrain-wise, for the flocks of Great Blue Herons and other shore birds that hung out there: 450 yards from North to South, 250 yards from East to West. It was a (usually) human-free island on the Puget Sound, just a little dot on the map. It was crested thickly by lots of tall evergreens and smooth old Madronas.

Mike amped himself up. This was a piece of cake! But a man on a mission is a flexible animal - he remembered that from his dad - and reminded himself to pay strict attention, even in this subtle wind, this fairly calm water. That’s just good practice. No sailor worth his salt would slack off, even if he knew he could afford to. That’s what it means to be good at this, that’s part of what all this means. You aren’t truly in command otherwise.

Michael got a little choppy water way out here. Nothing to it, just balance, roll with it. He tightened his grip on the tiller and slightly over-reined his mainsail. He was not using the jib, a reasonable way to go until now. But as he approached the north end of the Island, Michael gasped. He was aware that weather could shift on a dime, but this was unreal. He hit a blasting current of southbound wind. Seconds in, he saw sheets of rain off his starboard bow, fat splattery drops about to smack him sidelong from the north - Shit! Drenched now, just like someone aimed a fire hose at him. The gust it rode in on pressed his bow aggressively to port, toward the boulders that made up the island’s north bank. This wind was a fucking banshee and he could hardly see. He yanked the halyard, fiercely willed his bow starboard and away from those massive sharp rocks. Michael dived into a determined panic. He gritted his teeth and refused to brace for impact - he pleaded with the water and his boat with every alarm in his system on full nuke level. His synapses somehow teamed up and got him to think of his hands, which loosened their death grip on tiller and halyard. He slackened his main sail out, then way out. He shoved the tiller completely to his left, feeling a damn-the-torpedoes counterintuition. The bow rocked violently upward, then - a lurch starboard. “Ha! Defiance is what I’ll name you, boat,” Michael shouted through his drenched face. The bow lifted a bit again, then rightward a bit more… but from what Michael could see and feel, the wind should still be driving the whole boat port. He was fighting it, but was he really doing that well, that correctly? It felt more like weird physics…the soul of the Sound saving his skin? It was tempting to suppose he was an even better sailor than he thought, but he did not want to risk overestimating himself. He teetered in that headspace while working and re-working his slippery footing, then whipped his soaked head around to the left. The big jagged granite boulder that moments earlier had threatened to turn his Sunfish into an avant-garde, fiberglass sculpture of a picket fence was somehow completely behind him, now. Holy… Michael stopped. He made his eyes stop skittering so frantically. The water kept chopping up, the wind, although lessened, kept blasting him, and he was heavily sopping wet, but Michael looked at that rock, distancing, in raw amazement. He loosed his mainsail. His grip eased further. He watched the north end of the island curve out of view. He noticed the rain let off, realizing that had begun happening some moments before.

What would the boat be doing without you in it? This? I had a gust blowing south, yet the boat’s not crunched - in fact I’m well clear of the bank at this point, which is…jeez, I’m nearly a third of the way to the south end. What have I done? Have I really done something right? Maybe one smart move, but I’m not even…I’m just barely on the tiller right now. But…wow, weird. Good weird.

The wind did not let off much more, leaving a good breeze for a sailor. He watched the water, and looked at the black sky, which he could now see well. The tall, thick black lushness of trees and other growth on the island appeared to glide by, heading north on his left. Words drained out of his head. The boat slowed, and slowed some more. His hand instinctively kept pace, reining in on his sail, and his eyes zoned out along the shoreline. He took in the landscape, memorizing it like words. Just as his eyes met the south tip of the island, the moonlit charcoal silhouette of an epic Great Blue Heron, a real giant, came into view. It faced up to the stars like an avian astronomer.

The bird has made his peace with this weather, Michael thought. He understands it or not, he lets it be. He wouldn’t fight or question this moody sea or weird wind any sooner than he’d hop in an airplane. He knows the best way to handle the currents and elements. He knows they have the upper hand all the time and he knows to take their mercy without question if it’s given.

Words seeping into his now quiet head about how the bird sees and lives gave him a moment’s sensation and belief that the elements were him and that he was them; the water, the earth, the Madronas, the rain, the heron. He felt the wind at his back and imagined Rob, the camp, his friends, his brother and parents. He saw his parents’ lives as that of regular people, as if just now he understood that they too were someone’s kid, sibling, friend. He felt connected with all of them, some wordless new apprehension of time and history. He glided past his jet black majestic shorebird and at the south end of the island, they watched one another, each taking the other animal in. Michael finally coaxed his mind back to camp, and skated the Sunfish effortlessly to the dock. He moored it well and quickly, orienting just the way he had found it. Weird, good weird, he thought, but…I am a pilot.

Rob motioned, come here, boy. Come here. And Michael went to bed with a warm piece of coffeecake in his belly.