Can you paddle in your own dream?
Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Mon 1 Dec 2014 05:49
| Today it came, the absolute calmness predicted in the forecast. It gets warm when there is no wind at all. But the visibility is amazing. This morning started with us realizing we have a huge barracuda under the boat. Same scenery we had in BVI 6 years ago, we chartered a boat there to check if we liked to sail in the tropics (we did). Well Erika was 4 then and by some reason she got angry with us and jumped in the water to swim ashore, as she came alon in the water I see this huge fish charging at her and I did the only thing I could think of, a BOMB! I jumped on the fish with the biggest splash I could make and it retired under our keel and stayed there waiting for a next chance. We were so offended by that mean looking fish that we sailed away. There are records of barracudas attacking humans, especially the lonely old big ones. Well this fish got the story going but when we jumped in the water it disappeared for a while. Came back later but now it is gone... Oh yes, another funny thing happened this morning, a truck pulled into a road above the beach and started to back up a trailer with a sailboat, as he decided to turn the trailer towards the water the whole thing came loose and the boat rolled downhill down to the water by itself....bumping between stones that directed the trailer like a ball in a pinball machine... After that they were so busy trying to sort things out that I felt sorry for them, took the dinghy ashore and asked if they needed help, they did... After school and lunch I took the kayak along the reef Salsa is anchored close to shore, the red arrows show the tour I did today. As you can see on the picture most of it is on very shallow water, it is around 50cm on high tide and today it was crystal clear, no ripples on the surface, I could see the fish and the corals just as sharp as being under water with a mask. I noticed there has been a lot of articles about FLOW in a swedish paper and flow is what you get when you paddle and paddle. Time and room disappears, when you sense the speed as you fly on the water and as you see one coral efter the other, something strange happens, it becomes unreal. It was like flying in a universe. The sky and the water that meet at the horizon came into one. I was floating without weight, the only noise was from the sea crashing onto the outer reef, in a sparkle like the milky road, the foam from the waves formed a movement almost hypnotic. My lungs breathing as part of the ocean slow pulse, my eyes being the witness of how the universe is moving towards complexity. The light from the sun casting shadows of the kayak to the white sand bottom, giving me a perspective on how low we were sweeping above the dense world called water. |