Evidence of Happy People

Dreams on the Beach

For once a nice post. On the beach, yesterday, Dan found a message in a bottle - or rather, a test tube. It had been sealed with electrical tape, but had leaked, so I'd had to peel the paper out very carefully. It's too fragile to go back into the water, so it's going down to my collection at San Diego State University.

Ran into a guy called "Ken," who told me a story about how he and some friends started the idea of the Tribal Journeys in 1989, when they just decided to take off in canoes, and took five months to paddle to the Alaska end of Vancouver Island.

He gave me detailed instructions on making the canoe paddle required if one wishes to walk up to a canoe and ask to help paddle. And how awful it feels the first half hour, with muscle cramps, hard breathing, even vomiting, and what to eat and drink beforehand to feel better: "Raw potatoes and bananas. And lots of electrolytes."

Cartoon face in the sand.

He also told me that cold-water immersion training involved picking up a big rock and walking further into the water every day. Do I believe him? On the one hand, if it's physically possible, some fool has done it. On the other hand, Irish folk hero Finn McCool couldn't swim, so it's said, when he fell out of his boat, he just walked along the bottom. I wondered, 'How did my dad possess you? Because he'd pull that one, too." 

Ken was giving me the "we're all brothers" thing, but as a commercial fisherman, when it came to seals... there's always an animal pisses somebody off. I think I might be the only person on the planet really knows animals are just other cells in the planetary system, and not PUT here specifically to make us miserable or piss us off. That would be like a liver cell getting mad at a heart cell.

Dan walking by cartoon

Cartoonists on the beach! Anybody know who these sand drawings represent? Or is this original? Nice to see some kid - or maybe adult - using the sand the way any artist would, faced with a blank surface and any sort of drawing implement. 

Somebody once said of me, I could draw on a shovel with a stick. The truth is, we all would. Artists love all the toys. So those arguments about whether digital or traditional are better or preferable - we don't care. We love all the bafoys.