Once Upon a Gypsy Moon by Michael Hurley Read Free Book Online Page A

anticipation and dread, elation and dejection, self-satisfaction and self-doubt, resolution and regret.
    Many people—perhaps you among them—have made voyages in comfort and safety to the Bahamas from the northeastern part of the United States in small boats sailing out of sight of land, without expecting a medal from the Seven Seas Cruising Association for their efforts. I know this. I don’t mean to make a moon shot out of a mud puddle by my somewhat overwrought narrative. I do wish, though, to come clean and admit something: despite any pretentions to the contrary in the letters you now hold in your hands, I am not, nor have I ever been, a Salty Dog.
    True Salty Dogs—those self-sufficient Lords of the Deep who write books on navigation and the finer points of sail trim and boat mechanics—have long been a source of intimidation and annoyance to me. As best I can tell, there is not a poet among them. They are math-science folk and engineering types all. For them a clogged fuel line, battery overload, or electrical malfunction is a thing of rapture, and they set about solving the problem with the kind of Yankee ingenuity and determination “that built this country, by jiminy.” For me, however, these malfunctions are all signs from a benevolent God that man was meant to sail across oceans by the light of oil lamps, not motor across them with enough spare amps to power a refrigerator and a satellite weather station.
    Yet the Salty Dogs are the men women long for, who, given only an axe and a pack of matches, could build them a shopping mall. Give me an axe and a pack of matches, and I’ll build a woman a campfire around which to sing her a love song, neither of which will serve its intended purpose once it starts raining.
    For starters, I am afraid of the ocean, although on this point any true sailor would readily concur. I have imagined an unmarked grave for myself beneath the waves many times, often out of a macabre boredom on long watches, but more often for the purpose of planning ways to avoid it. I am almost never sick at sea, thank God, but because my loved ones sometimes are, I have chosen to sail some of the rougher, longer passages alone. When I do, I often suffer bouts of loneliness and melancholy, although this comes with the benefit of encouraging sleep on long passages, perchance to dream of those whom I love and miss.
    Once I settle into a voyage that takes me away from work and family, I continually question my judgment in having begun it and the wisdom, not to mention the expense, of continuing it. There has not been an extended voyage in memory in which I did not firmly resolve at some point to sell or give away the infernal boat at the nearest port and fade into a sensible life of gardening and bridge.
    Yet despite my disconsolate temperament, ever have I heard the still, small voice that says “go.” I cannot tell you why. I do not know. But I do understand what the message means. It is not an invitation or a compulsion to “go have fun.” I know whose voice that would be: the same fifty-three-year-old lawyer who often tells me to go for that extra slice of birthday cake, or to settle into a DVD-induced haze on a couch in a dark, cozy room instead of riding a bike or picking up a book or writing this memoir to you.
    People for whom sailing is a way to have fun, rather than a way of life, don’t long for the horizon. What they seek can be found in a weekend club race or a day trip that ends back at the marina. People do not sail out of sight of land and endure the monotony of an unchanging sea for days on end, punctuated occasionally by the heart-thumping anxiety of storms and the uncertain contours of a distant landfall, far from aid, because it is fun. (Though to be fair, in many moments it is precisely that.) They sail because they know that the journey is its own reward, that it leads someplace beyond a mere geographical destination, and because they hear the call of Thoreau’s different