Uncharted

by Kim Brown Seely

  “Uh, no, I don’t,” I laughed, grinning at how much funk my husband had always had for a white guy from New Jersey.

  “What about the Aussies over there on Polar Bear?”

  “Well…maybe the Aussies,” I admitted. “But probably not to ‘Ladies Night.’ Frankly? I don’t think there’s much discoing down goin’ on here in Port McNeill…”

  “Shake it, girl!” my husband crowed. We pranced and shimmied, just because we could, Heron’s curtains drawn tight. It was as if we’d reached a sort of finish line and, having crossed it, got to be kids again while our kids had to figure out how to be adults. And although I was still feeling down, missing my sons keenly, after a while I also began to feel something else: an odd sense of lightness. It was as if I’d begun to recover a part of my being that was floating. Not floating as in wanting, but as in free. And with this new sense of buoyancy came another unexpected experience—I began to feel sexy again. It had been a while.

  Jeff must have felt the same way. We stared at each other, dancing like fools who didn’t give a damn on the rotting docks beside the mudflats in the middle of nowhere in the night, and said at the same time: “Damn, we can do whatever we want!”

  “You should take your top off, Brown!” my husband suggested, shimmying by.

  “My top?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  Well, it is getting kind of warm in here, I thought. Why not? So I pulled my sweater off, then flung my bra over my head. Now Curtis Mayfield’s “Super Fly” was playing, the booming funk amplified by Heron’s snug interior, the beat bouncing off all that wood—and I felt great flinging my hair back and forth to the beat.

  “Yeah, now we’re talkin’!” my husband crowed.

  Next up: the Commodores’ “Brick House,” an absurd song to be dancing to topless when you’re as bird-breasted as yours truly, but you can’t not dance to “Brick House” on a boat with those acoustics. Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” followed, then James Brown’s “I Got You,” and the Isley Brothers’ funk classic “Fight the Power.”

  * * *

  In some ways the re-entry into life after kids feels like swimming around in a fishbowl that’s suddenly been flipped on its side, spilling into an ocean of open water: you don’t immediately realize you’re set free. But as the two of us danced and pranced and shimmied around on that boat, just us on a night that, years hence, we’d always remember as the Floating Funkathon Dance Party (me in no more than Levi’s and bare feet, feeling risqué, and my rakish husband wearing old jeans and a worn-in K2 ski T-shirt, his sexy, comic confidence mixed in with the smell of sweat and salt), we started to get it. All our internal hand-wringing and worrying began to fall away…

  “You know what?” I said, finally collapsing on the settee, catching my breath. “We don’t have to be so damn good all the time anymore!”

  It was as if after all those years of being responsible parents, we had the mutual realization that not only had we crossed a sort of finish line: We didn’t have to set an example twenty-four hours a day. We didn’t have to be appropriate. And most of all? We felt like we didn’t have to worry.

  * * *

  Maybe that’s what the sense of lightness was about. We didn’t have to wait up at night until we heard the back door click open. We could run around naked. We could eat dinner in our underwear. We could skip dinner. We could have sex any time of day, wherever we wanted. We could disco down to cheesy seventies music. We could boogie to James Brown like no one was watching. We could stay up late devouring reruns of Game of Thrones. We could stay up even later, watch an entire season’s worth of The Crown. We could cuss and swear and fight. We could lock the door and turn out the lights and pretend no one was home on Halloween. We could invite our friends out for martinis on Monday. We could sleep late on Tuesday. We could stop making those goddamn hash browns. We could stop signing piles of permission slips. We could take off in September when everyone else was back to school. We could feed the dog steak at the dinner table. We could rest our elbows on the dinner table. We could put our feet up on the dinner table. We could smoke pot if we felt like it, which we never do, but it was an option now that it was legal in Washington State. We could learn a new language. Take up a new instrument. Play it badly. We could spend all Saturday reading in bed, even when the sun was shining. We could be utterly, exceptionally, brilliantly irresponsible. We could be bad…

  “Prepare yourself for pleasure!” I called out.

  * * *

  The next morning we both overslept. I awoke finally, groggy and disoriented. But the memory of all the things we did together with such playful abandon didn’t linger long.

  James is on the opposite side of the country was the dull reality radiating from my core, eclipsing everything else, even the sultry fun my husband had instigated. I felt punched in the gut, leaden, as if the weight of this fact anchored me to the bed. Who were we if we were no longer day-to-day parents? We finally managed to get up and turn on the cabin heaters. Then we started a pot of coffee, pulled up our electronic charts, and tuned in to the VHF weather channel.

  Where to go from here? Against everyone’s advice we still wanted to sail north, embark on our empty-nest pilgrimage, even though it was late in the season and all the other boats were heading south. But now that we finally had a wide window of time, our plan seemed insane.

  I pulled out our Waggoner Cruising Guide and reread the section on waters north of Vancouver Island: “Most cruisers limit their voyages to the waters south of a line that runs between […] Port Hardy on Vancouver Island. North of this line the northern part of Queen Charlotte Sound is a natural barrier. It takes time, a strong boat, and good navigation skills to proceed farther up the coast.”

  Great, I thought.

  But then, maybe we were not “most cruisers”…

  We had time. We had a shared sense of purpose and a strong boat, and most important, our navigation skills were getting better every day.

  “Bring cash,” the cruising guide continued. “You’ll still have telephone service, but not as often. Telus has the best cell phone coverage, although it’s gone shortly after Port Hardy and doesn’t re-emerge until Chatham Sound.”

  Huh—where the heck is Chatham Sound? I wondered, but there was no time to look that up. Jeff was already up on deck unplugging the power cords, readying Heron so I could untie the dock lines and clamber aboard as we pushed off.

  Just then, as if on cue, my cell phone rang. It was James! I answered it, climbed the companionway, balancing the phone on the top step and putting it on speaker. Jeff and I both huddled in close.

  “Hey, how are you guys?” we heard him say.

  “We’re good. How are you?”

  “Great. The rain stopped yesterday, and now it’s really hot and muggy.”

  James told us about the kids he’d met in his dorm at St. Lawrence—East Coast kids from New Hampshire and Connecticut and Maine—the classes he’d signed up for, the upperclassmen back on campus. He sounded good. He was anxious for classes to start. We asked him a bunch of questions. Told him we’d just found out we might not have any cell coverage for the next week or so, unfortunately, but that we’d check in with him as soon as we did.

  “You won’t have any cell?” he said.

  “Well, we’re not sure,” I admitted, trying to sound calm. “We just read there aren’t any cell towers north of here for a while, not until we get to someplace called Chatham Sound, but we’re not sure how far that is…If you need something and can’t reach us, call Grandpa Bart.”

  “Okay. Bye, Mom, bye, Dad. Love you guys.”

  After that, after just hearing both my sons’ voices in the twenty-four hours before we set sail, I felt better.

  The boys were engaging in their own lives, as they should be. It was fantastic for them. And good for us too. We’d get through this. We pushed off from the dock with two deep blasts from the bow thruster, feeling rusty with the whole process after a week away—pul
ling up the dripping fenders, then coiling and stowing the long bow and stern lines.

  “We’re headed north, just like you wanted,” Jeff said as we cleared the harbor.

  “I know,” I said, looking up Chatham Sound. I had to pull out a new volume, Exploring the North Coast of British Columbia, to do it. I found Chatham Sound listed, turned to a page toward the back, and studied the map. My heart sank: That was it? Way up there?

  Chatham Sound turned out to be the body of water just south of Prince Rupert, BC, running alongside the Alaska–British Columbia border. Shit. I’d realized we’d be isolated in these remote waters, but it had never occurred to me we’d be completely cut off, out of cell range for days, weeks even.

  “You’re not gonna believe this, but there’s no cell until Prince Rupert!” I winced, shooting a beseeching look at my husband. “How can there be no cell between here and Alaska?”

  We stared at each other for a long moment, and this was when I realized that our quest to sail north to the interior of the Great Bear Rainforest in hopes of seeing this near-mythic creature, the white bear, was no small thing. I sighed and realized that, like all true quests, this was a journey of the heart. A huge leap of faith.

  And I also understood at last, truly understood, that this journey was a physical leaving behind of the world we once knew, in the hopes of glimpsing something magical before returning home. I wanted to be able to look back in ten years and think I can’t believe we did that!—think it in a good way, a wondrously astounded way. I wanted to live joyfully, without regrets. I knew in my bones it was entirely too late to turn back—we’d already 100 percent committed to doing this thing—cell phones be damned.

  HUMPBACKS

  Queen Charlotte Strait, despite all the warnings about its being a lengthy crossing that exposes mariners to the full fury of the open Pacific, was still and calm; the wind was a murmur at 4.4 knots, the water glassy, spreading into gentle ovoids the size of hula hoops. The sky and strait extending behind us were a vast pale blue, round as an eye. Off Heron’s stern, gray and white bands of clouds stretched over the sea. One small cloud, cast out by the herd, drifted off to the west. Before us, the sky was darker, but more dramatic too. To the sides the Coast Range’s dark brown peaks, some glazed with icy-white snow patches, were silhouettes against the darkening sky. We passed a few fishing boats headed in the opposite direction. Then, no one.

  “There aren’t any other boats,” Jeff said.

  “I know. It’ll be okay,” I said.

  We texted Sam, reminded him we were heading north and would be out of cell range for a while. We also called my dad, Bart, in California. As we spoke he pulled out his iPad and linked to Google Maps, zooming in on Queen Charlotte Strait.

  “We just found out we probably won’t have any cell service until Alaska!” I shouted. “So if the boys need anything, or someone needs to reach us in an emergency, well…” My voice trailed off as I imagined worst-case scenarios. “Can you be the boys’ first point of contact if they need anything?” I finally managed.

  “Of course I will,” my dad agreed, always a dad.

  “Okay, thanks!” I yelled into the phone, feeling slightly less panicked. “Thanks, Dad! We really appreciate it—I love you!” Then I unexpectedly teared up. My father is exceptional, the sort of man who stays steady and calm. I adored him.

  Who does this? I thought. I remembered an amusing newspaper article I’d read before the Big Drop-Off; it advised parents not to worry if their college-aged kids didn’t return their texts. It described real-life helicopter parents telephoning the dean’s office in a panic when they were unable to reach their kids.

  But what if the situation was reversed: What if your kids can’t reach you? I wondered. What if they need to reach you but can’t because you’re out of cell range? What if they can’t reach you for, say, seven or ten or twelve days? This hadn’t come up in the article. It hadn’t come up in the article because no responsible twenty-first-century parent would drop their kid off at college and then float off the face of the earth the very next day.

  But the dilemma could not be helped. As with any true expedition, isolation came with the territory. Ahead in the distance were low-lying rock islands with wistful names: Wishart Island, Desertas Island, McLeod Island, Ghost Island. I peered at them through the binoculars. They looked like brown skipping stones scattered on an endless, impenetrable sea. Eventually, we neared and then threaded our way between them. The strait was vast and tidal. It seemed to stretch forever to the northwest, rising and falling like a breathing thing. I watched strands of languid kelp lift with the swells.

  * * *

  I shot one last quick text to the boys while we could: “Grandpa Bart says to text him if u need anything! We love you, have fun! Xo Mom”

  Well, that’s one way to cut the cord, I thought.

  Jeff was down below, refining our course. I was up at the helm alone, surrounded by vastness: water and sky rimmed on the distant edges by dark mountains. Except before me there were no mountains, only a thin horizon line where silver water met a sky piled with gray clouds. So much space. So much seeming emptiness when all we had now was silence and each other’s company. Was it nothing or was it everything? I stared and listened. There was only the sound of water riffling off the hull and the drone of the engine. I lifted my chin skyward and looked up, and after a long while heard the buzz of a floatplane stuttering across the sky.

  We passed the last small rocky island.

  We passed the point where the last bar on my cell phone shrank and disappeared.

  I peered out beyond the wheel. I’m glad to be alone, I thought. Sitting and listening and staring. I felt drained. Emptied. As if all the energy and effort of the past twenty-some years of raising kids had seeped out of me. I zipped my coat tighter and sank deep inside myself; a small, hard nut, willing my heart not to hurt. But it did.

  I thought of my girlfriends. Their doubt. Why would you leave for eight weeks alone with your husband? they’d questioned, incredulous. Maybe they were right. I missed my sister. I wished I’d called her before we left Port McNeill, but it was too late now.

  Why are we doing this? I wondered. I let my doubt carry me up and out of the boat until I was utterly disassociated, mind wandering, lost, not even paying attention to the compass, the wheel, our GPS heading. I felt like the physical embodiment of absence. I missed the boys. The missing throbbed; a dull ache in my heart. I resented the ache, and I resented the fact that I couldn’t seem to lift myself above it. I turned and watched Heron’s wake. The water spooled behind us like something the boat was secreting, yards and yards of blue ribbon. The distance between us and the boys lengthened, and as it did, separated us from that life as if it were time.

  Why are we doing this? I wondered again.

  Suddenly, as if in response, I heard—coming from the seemingly limitless space—a breath. A single exhalation so loud I could hear it, the air and force and timbre of it, floating across the water and landing on my head.

  Huh?

  Phhhuuuuuphhhhh.

  There it was again: Phhhuuuuuphhhhh, I glanced up, the sound pulling me from my uneasy interior world. Oh! There, hanging less than two hundred yards off the starboard bow, was a plume of white mist—a whale spout—rising up. The air vibrated. Thrummed! I watched the mist hang in the air, suspended for a moment.

  Then out of nowhere, maybe fifty feet from the whale spout, an enormous thing as big as a bus shot straight up out of the water—its titanic bulk a rocket, a jumbo jet fuselage, a building, impossibly vertical—then came crashing back down with a boom loud as a cannon blast, sending up a violent explosion of water.

  “Jeff! Jeff!” I shouted toward the companionway. “Jeff, whales!”

  And they came again. Two of them off the starboard bow, closer this time. A pair of gray giants exploded out of the sea, defied gravity for the briefest moment, then came crashing down, sending up a splash so massive I could feel its salty spray all over m
y upturned face. It was like I could feel the sea and the sky and the whales and the bracing air we were all breathing, the whole world of it on my skin.

  “Jeff!” I yelled, laughing, incredulous. “Jeff, get up here—humpbacks!”

  By the time he heard me and rushed up, he caught only their tails. They were good ones, though: shiny-wet black and big as steam shovels, surprisingly graceful, disappearing with a pair of slow-motion waves, and remarkably fluid for something so epic. As the humpbacks’ mammoth gray girths went down, diving deep into the ancient ocean, their tails rose in a final salute, water streaming off.

  Jeff and I watched together: surveyors of a newfound world. The whales, the wonder of them, cracked open my chest.

  “Oh my god! Oh my god!” I kept saying, over and over.

  * * *

  Sometimes I think you are able to keep going because you aren’t really yourself anymore. Something shakes you to your core, an instant so charged, so astounding, you open yourself to every atom of it—as if you’ve escaped your own skin and let your soul spread forth. That is what the whales were like for me. They took my breath, grabbed me and shook me, startling me awake with a jolt so mighty I could feel my listless interior world shatter and something immediate and mysterious and vital usher me into the present one.

  “Everything is so alive here,” I whispered to Jeff.

  And in that instant with the pair of humpbacks breaching right beside me, I also knew that Sam and James were fine. It’s as if the two whales had signaled: We are here! We are with you! You might feel lost, but everything is with you, by the way: the sea, and the birds moving fluidly across it, and the whales swimming silently beneath it, and hundreds and thousands of miles away, your boys, Sam and James. We are all with you, but we are also free. And in between there are hundreds of millions of other living things—all connected. That is the wonder of the world—how you can know it, and as much of it as your heart can handle, both intimately and broadly.