Into the Wild

From Cape Sable, we made our way to the Little Shark River.  Okay, the name wasn't getting any points from me.  We would enter the river and then make a turn into a smaller canal to take us to the Shark River.

We found a good spot with protection from the newer upcoming winds (25+ knots) and set two anchors, both leading from the bow, but one forward and one aft.  This is called a Bahamian anchor and helps stabilize us when the current flow changes, as it does quickly and strongly in this river.

We settled in and sat topsides to watch wildlife.  We all want to see an alligator, but we may have to go into the mangrove cuts to do that.  What we did see were huge turtles, the kind of which I'd never seen before and can't even identify, because their heads would come up at a 45-degree angle while they got air and sometimes you'd see the shell, but never clearly enough to say for sure what kind of turtle you were seeing.

The guys had more luck with it than me, but I did see a few.  After the bugs settled in, more mosquitoes than noseeums, but pains nonetheless, we had to settle belowdecks.  As the sun set, flocks and flocks of different seabirds came in from the shore, most likely to settle at a lake about two miles further inland from us.  What a sight that would be in the evenings!

Today, as I write this, we have moderate winds and rain.  Still, Gary wants to take the dinghy out later on to check out the mangrove areas for that elusive alligator sighting. 

I've been close enough to them before when he and I were last here in the Everglades; we had rigged a sail into our new hard dinghy and were moving slowly through the mangroves.  After being eaten alive by the noseeums, we could hear the slow gutteral burps of the alligators on land.  They only came off land after we passed by, swimming back and forth across the canal behind us.  That was a good enough sighting for me and could last for the rest of my life.

But I saw Gary's face as we turned into these rivers and how excited he was to be getting away from people and back to nature.  We passed two sailboats on the way in, one tucked just inside the Little Shark and then further up, the Captain of another boat asked if we would be getting better holding further up.  We told him this was our first time here, but that we hoped to get a good spot.  When we woke this morning from little sleep because our anchor kept slipping (So, no, other Captain dude, the holding is not much better up here!), another sailboat had anchored quite a ways down this river from us.  Occasionally, a power boat goes by, one of those little open things where the guys are standing up holding onto the hand rails of the hard canopy top, going fast enough to kick up the waves.  Yesterday, we saw a couple in a powerboat wearing goggles just to drive.

The problem with coming back to nature is that you have to give up some control.  Weather is fickle and you have to bend to its will.  We have no technology out here; as we crossed over into no-cellular-zone, I got a call from my dad's house.   Answering, I got nothing.  I figured the phone was out, so I texted to let them know we'd not have the phone, hoping that we could still text.  But apparently, that text may have never gone through and so I worry.  We'll be three days without signal--I kept checking my phone at intervals during a 24-hour period thinking that maybe that "No Service" would change to three bars--no such luck.  

My dad and stepmother are both living with cancer and I worry there may be a problem.  Possibly a hospitalization, possibly worse.

Or maybe they were just wondering how we were doing; we don't talk on the phone a a lot, but I've got plans to see them when I go back home for a while next week.  I'm fearing the worst, but trying to keep the bad thoughts out of my head.  Trying to control my uncontrollable brain.  Trying to control the health of my family from so many miles away.  Trying to control this trip so that none of the passages are too risky.   In essence, living in the way humans have been for thousands and thousands of years; tightening the reigns as we go. 

This trip is a highly emotional one for me, doing something out of my comfortable bounds.  I have had high-anxiety days, which I have shared, and I'm always feeling a bit on edge, but that's who I am.  I hope I've conveyed that this trip has been life changing and that I've learned so much about what I can do with or without, like certain foods or daily showers or solid ground under my feet.

Glorious moments are too many and I sometimes dwell on the scary, bad times, but know that I've gained much more than I've lost here.  I'm excited to see how this will transfer to my life on shore again; what effects will be felt inside and outside.