A Wet & Wild Thanksgiving, part 1

There are people who embrace completely unreasonable adventures -- rowing across the atlantic, hiking up Mount Everest in a pair of shorts, or sailing solo around Antarctica. Blessed be them.

My threshold of craziness is much lower-- the most unreasonable I get is in the mad-dog pursuit of surf by sailboat.

 Instead of spending Thanksgiving in a cozy living room with the laughter of family, four of us cast off from Avalon harbor in Catalina, and headed 20-some nautical miles into the ocean, under a canopy of dark clouds boiling ahead of a storm.

As we pulled into the navy island of San Clemente, there were no helicopters, or ships with live fire, or other signs of the war machine. The only thing blasting into the island was a huge groundswell.




We anchored in a large cove with swells moving through 40ft of water. Billowing plumes blew off the waves with a south-east wind -- an indicator of an approaching front. Yet, shafts of light shone on the ocean surface, with a thinning cloud cover.

My girlfriend Sabrina looked at me hopefully - maybe it would clear up?  In full disclosure before the trip, I had optimistically said that there was a 50-50 chance we'd get rain. My buddy Alex played along, with his characteristic cheaky grin, "I think we could get lucky - one way or another!"

Chris was less buoyant, and wanted to get down to business: "Are we doing this, or what?" he said, pulling a wetsuit out of the locker. The conditions were stable; this was our chance.

What followed was a magical afternoon. When all the elements come together in surfing, it is deeply gratifying. Tide, wind, swell, light, sea lions, us.  It was one of those blissful moments when everything "lines up".

Isn't this what we are all looking for?  When life seems just right, feeling total connection in an effortless flow, whether for the basketball player "in the zone" or a mother holding her newborn baby; or Alex, in this case, riding through a heaving tube and declaring his trip was already complete.

Back at the boat, Sabrina made a Thanksgiving meal fit for kings. Half a roast turkey in the boat oven, homemade cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and all the trimmings.

In all the baking and exuberance, the sous chefs failed to notice the wind was increasing. When the pitter-patter of rain began on the canopy, Chris unzipped the curtain and looking out into the dark anchorage. The lights of the Navy base were dim in the distance, and he recoiled. "Damn it's cold outside!"

At this point, I had the brilliant idea of firing up our wood-burning stove, which we had just "fixed" the week prior, to my eventual chagrin. That little stove had treated us graciously for years, up until that fateful night.

In a classic moment of not-knowing what you don't know, I had recently fixed the leaky chimney flu with epoxy, as I do with all repairs on the boat. Unfortunately, I forgot to take into account that epoxy catches on fire at a certain temperature.




Suffice to say that I had the opportunity to try the fire extinguisher in a real emergency for the first time. I'm happy to report it worked! Besides cleaning the extinguisher mess, all we had to contend with was 20 minutes of fumes as we aired out the cabin, along with some unwelcome rain as we enjoyed our pumpkin pie.

When the air was clear, we slept with our full tummies and the steady drone of rain, confident in the 66lbs Bruce anchor and 230 feet of chain holding us in place.

A radical change occurred at 10am the next morning, which I thought, was a very civilized hour for the storm to kick into gear.

At that point, the wind shifted and began pushing us towards shore; Aldebaran copping the wind chop on the nose, suddenly turning this peaceful cove into a lee shore, an unprotected anchorage.

The rain had started pounding, but there was no choice -- it was time to go sailin'.

What makes us feel Alive? thoughts at Little Harbor

Sunset and moonset at Little Harbor in Catalina.

It's when I feel happiest --- when I feel most alive.  But what exactly is this feeling of aliveness..?

Not necessarily when I'm energetic; I can be very calm.  I'm just content and full of life. Aliveness seems to be contagious. Enthusiasm, joy, and beauty in others can raise our energy levels.

Even an incredible vista can send a surge of life into our bodies. Some places seem to be pulsing with life force -- a lush jungle with a harmony of animal noises, a majestically silent desert, or a sheltered cove erupting in sunset colors. 

It is like the writer whose words "come alive" in a piece of paper and turn text into moving stories. 

Aliveness is a key to feeling good and general wellbeing. Yet, we forget about this simple truth when it comes to restoration and recovery. 

A stroke victim - or a landscape ravished by goats - can have a dead and numb feeling. We try to "fix" each of its components that got "broken". Recovery, however, is not about fixing something. It is about creating the right conditions for life to flow back into a person or place, as it naturally wants to. 

How alive and full of vitality do we feel today, compared to our final years in college? Compared to a memorable vacation? Compared to when we saw a humpback whale for the first time? We have a sense of what the answers may be. We may not be able to measure it - but we can try to understand and improve it. 

What affects Aliveness?  Like yin and yang, there are two sides to the coin: 

1. Lifeforce is the positive, creative side. It is abundance and diversity - whether of animals, of thoughts, or ideas. It is excitement, new technology, and imagination. But... it can also create its anti-thesis, Waste, as we end up with "too much of a good thing".
2. Waste is the negative, destructive side.  Waste is by definition non-useful and potentially harmful. As a by-product of creative energy, it is a fact of life, and should be accepted. In fact, if managed skillfully, dealing with waste can generate more creativity and Lifeforce, feeding the cycle. Otherwise, it can dramatically reduce Aliveness. 

To feel content and full of life, we need to enhance our opportunities for Lifeforce (e.g. having a meaningful career, having kids, doing exciting things, planting a garden) and we need to wisely manage our Waste (e.g. not over-spending, not over-eating unhealthy foods, having a bad attitude). 

Those same principles are in play - whether we are recovering from trauma or in the restoration of traumatized landscapes. The great thing is that what we learn from one, we can apply to the other. 

Little Harbor Sunset from Kristian Beadle on Vimeo.