On Whale Island

by Daniel Hays

  9. Winter

  I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things.

  —THOREAU

  DAY 148

  Beautiful shooting stars all night, followed by full-on meteor storm near dawn. Wendy was afraid there wouldn’t be enough stars around for tomorrow night. We could see smoke trails in the dawning sky. Sharing a shooting star with someone you are in love with is a perfect moment. We also watched a UFO, which looked like a shot flare under a parachute. Stephan decided it was a scout ship from Zafron 3, a small world in the Delta quadrant.

  The weather’s closing in now. Less sunlight on the clear days, and three out of seven days we are unable to leave the island. The seas form a wonderful barrier of surf at the harbor mouth.

  I am a wilderness emergency medical technician and have a small hospital of supplies in a big backpack. We are prepared for anything up to the sort of injury where you look into some brand-new body cavity. Weather permitting, we can get to a hospital in two hours.

  We have everything from splints to Chap Stick, sutures to baby powder. In my experience, the body takes pretty good care of itself, so no worries, and a little prayer maybe.

  With the reduced sunlight we’re sleeping like hibernating bears, getting some chubbiness as winter sets in. Daylight hours are only slightly less than in Idaho, but here we are living practically outdoors. Yes, we are dry and warm, but our home is mostly glass. Our internal clocks are in sync with nature, not the ten o’clock news. When the sun sets we become sleepy. We rise at dawn, and the sunrise signals our breakfast.

  Every month we cross to the mainland to get a big package of all our mail from Idaho. Last week Wendy got a skiing exercise machine and she’s trying to get me on it. My pathetic response is “Are you kidding? I’m a second-degree black belt! I used to do push-ups on my fingertips! I could kick Captain Kirk’s ass!”

  The machine is set up downstairs . . . a four-hundred-dollar exercise machine on an island seven miles from—I can’t even say it. But it is funny to hear her skiing away. She wears her headphones, so every day the house trembles and these maniacal off-key shrieks are yelled out. Since Wendy has been listening to my generation’s music only since we’ve been married, her brain is not filled with the lyrics from every Rolling Stone album. Today the house shudders to “I can’t get no sanitation.”

  I guess during an exercise frenzy the words don’t have to fit with the song, but none of it seems to fit with the island. I should throw Wendy’s health magazines over the side when I boat the mail from shore.

  DAY 150—DECEMBER

  The first snow is on the ground and the dogs are barking at it with enthusiasm. Unlike dogs, we are blessed with the ability to define and separate, to label. Or maybe it’s a sort of a curse. These labels are also what make us lonely.

  I love a snowstorm because it unites all things by texture. From a patch of wild asparagus to a bulldozer, it’s all white, soft, cold, and tastes the same. Definitions don’t work; everything is just one thing. What else unites us so? When I am having an episode of manic enlightenment I see peoples soul’s this way, exactly equal as if we were all caught in a snowstorm together.

  DAY 151

  Today the wind was blowing twenty-five knots, and the seas as big as I’d like to run into with this small aluminum boat. Foam and spray, even some green water over the bow (that is a phrase sailors use to describe a lot of water where there should only be heavy spray, at worst). I surfed down the big waves. I like to go alone because Wendy and Stephan get really scared. As I return I’m drenched. Icicles hang from my sleeves. I make a lunge for the boat ramp and then fall into the shallow water as the dogs engulf me in eager greetings. I secure the boat, stagger up the trail, slip down the one small hill, crawl into the house, and collapse, holding out the package. It’s warm inside. Wendy has just baked a loaf of rye bread.

  Still wet, I tear into the mail and am reminded of a strange world I once lived in. I sort the bills, which means I give them to Wendy. The last time I balanced the checkbook I was $2,000 off. I get a cool army-surplus catalog, and I absolutely must have the “recently discovered in an old warehouse authentic WWI German motorcycle messenger goggle’s case.”

  There is a heap of junk mail, total trash. It is hard to be a victim out here, and I’ve become proactive in my asking to be taken off mailing lists. To the NRA I write: “I’m a liberal pro-gun-control fanatic. I have fantasies of Sarah Brady. Please take my name off your mailing list.” Idaho public television gets “I hate TV, I moved to the only place I could find without reception. Please take my name off your mailing list.” To the company advertising “STAY HARD for INTIMACY,” I write: “My dick is hard, thank you. I have lots of sex, I’m fine! Leave me alone!” My old grade school gets “Look, I really did not like this school and that is why I left in the fifth grade, so please . . .” And finally, to a company offering a cologne “guaranteed to get you all the pretty women you want, no matter what you look like . . . without even trying,” I write, “Due to a serious accident, my penis has been removed. Desist these mailings or I will sue your ass for the emotional trauma they are causing.” I wonder how I got on that mailing list—either from those “virile” pills I got two years ago or from the “burn fat while you sleep” pills (hence the “no matter what you look like”). I wonder why I’ve gotten no hair-loss ads this month.

  I so appreciate the perspective gained by distancing myself from our culture. I’m just not smart enough to be alert when I’m swimming in it. Here is an ad for a “golden bookmark from rain-forest leaves.” Somebody is actually promoting a product made of cut rain-forest leaves to promote saving . . . oh hell, it’s just too ridiculous. The ad covers its own ugly ass immediately with “handpicked by rain-forest natives.” They douse each leaf in copper then eighteen-karat gold, and you can own it. This is such a pure absurdity that I think it should have its own place on the periodic table. The rest of my junk mail I just stamp with my DECEASED—RETURN TO SENDER stamp.

  DAY 154

  I’ve decided to go hunt with Peter. I don’t know if I’ll really pull the trigger on Bambi, but it’s been years since I allowed myself to crawl in muck and slither inside an aware animal’s radar. I want that excitement. In Maine I almost touched a deer. I’d camouflaged myself—mostly by being pretty naked and rolling in a fire pit. Then oh so slowly, using the hairs on my skin to feel with, I crept to a deer trail I’d found the night before. I dozed off, but then woke up with a doe about four feet away. That, to me, is hunting.

  Somehow I have Peter convinced that I am a great wilderness man. We meet before sunrise at his father’s wharf and are off in one of his wooden boats. We motor into a small cove, the same one Peter’s mother lived in when she was a kid.

  We snake up a tributary for miles, finally running out of deep water. We tie the boat up to a tree and continue on foot over some rocky shallows until we find the small rowboat Peter leaves where the water gets deep enough again to continue. We row over a pond of thin ice, leaving beautiful patterns where our paddles break through.

  “Hunting”? The word is overused, certainly misused anyway. I would call what I did “lost with a gun.” Peter was fine—happy to be alive and with purpose even. I fell into a stream (after breaking through the ice and bashing my shins), sat on a mutated giant thorn, and during the ten minutes I was separated from Peter experienced fear and hunger like that of the Donner party.

  Hours later we stumbled into Peter’s camp to celebrate nothing more than the glory of being alive at sunrise. (That may sound good, but actually I was half frozen and unwilling to let Peter know.) Beans, meat, beer, and white bread. Boy, am I old. One beer before noon and I’m a-grog all the rest of the day.

  Wendy housewived and was happy to see me when I returned. She’d eaten a whole can of Pringles. Now she’s making cookies and drinking a martini. I lie in the sun and Wendy brings me assort
ed crackers and cheese. It is great when I can convince her I just did something heroic for her: “I thought of your starving face so I pulled myself out of the water and crawled on. My clothes were a sheet of ice. I had to carry Peter to safety, and the snakes . . .” She cares for me for as long as I can nurse it—four hours so far, and in a minute I’ll bring up frostbite and how I don’t think its too bad (“but I didn’t want to worry you”). That’ll bring me to about lunch tomorrow. (“Oh just some soup, dear . . . and a tuna sandwich. . . . Can you hard-boil me some eggs? . . . No, I want the crusts cut off . . . triangles please. . . . could you hand me that pillow?”)

  DAY 157

  Just Wendy and I walked around the island today. The sun was warm and we lay on our bellies at Pebble Beach and dug ourselves in, scooping warmed pebbles onto our backs. We collected Christmas presents, only the most beautiful stones, each one telling its own geological story. Certainly the least stressful Christmas shopping ever. The dogs went dipping in and out, Abby eating sea urchins and anything else dead. You would think eating sea urchins would be difficult, like trying to swallow a porcupine ass first. But Abby shows relentless commitment to whatever she is doing, blessed with the sort of ignorance that leads to discovery.

  OH MY GOSH!

  The best meals I prepare are usually in the Oh my gosh! category. It is called that for the simple reason that four out of five meals served in this style begin or end with one or more of the diners exclaiming, “Oh my gosh!”

  OMG meal preparation takes more self-confidence than most people have. Four out of five failures is enough for an average person to recognize as feedback. But not me; I take it as a challenge.

  The rules for OMG cooking are simple. All OMG meals must be cooked in one pot. They must consist of 20 to 80 percent leftovers. It should be colorful. An onion must be present.

  Since we have the name OMG at our disposal already, you not need bother boxing yourself in with any other name. Soufflé, stew, stir-fry, roast . . . these limit your creativity. Make something the likes of which has never before appeared on any table!

  What usually happens is that the initial thematic flavor scheme crumbles. For this reason the food must be taste-tested often. Beginning with a subtle flavor like dill or basil is fine. Just don’t count on it. And never, ever answer with specifics when someone asks, “What’s for dinner?”

  To really be an OMG chef you must think of yourself as a hero, someone who enjoys risk.

  As soon as you are willing to admit the failure of the basil theme, the fun begins. First use soy sauce or tamari. Next pepper, lots of pepper. Then sugar. Now it is important to taste the food. If it’s edible, yell, “Food!” quickly, before an impulse will cause you to add something offensive. If it is not yet edible (most likely it was edible ten minutes earlier and you missed it), you must attempt a massive food-group reorientation. Gloves are good from here on out. Try tomato sauce. If no good, go on to ketchup. If you still can’t eat it, go on to curry. Be careful here, because all you have left is a single magic bullet, and that is chili powder.

  Thus the dogs and I eat well. Wendy and Stephan eat a lot of crackers.

  DAY 158

  Dogs couldn’t have pockets. They live too much in the here and now. Human deviation from nature came with the first pocket. Adam and Eve were thrown out of Eden and thus began wearing clothes with pockets. A dog is so much in the moment because it has nowhere to put anything that is not in its mouth. Which came first, the pocket or the desire to have a pocket? Ever seen a dog wearing one of those doggie backpacks? They look miserable, absolutely miserable.

  I envy having no concept of keeping. I watch Abby find a big stinky dead lobster on the shore and see her agony looking at us, it, us, it . . . as she realizes that she cannot both come with us and eat it. She must decide, us or it. She whines in confusion, but finally chooses us and looks back only once.

  Another meteor shower and we all lie on the rocks wrapped in blankets. The stars rain toward us in lightning streaks. No matter how many flash by we cry out in oohs and aahs, unable to remain silent. Miracles do not become humdrum. We share brilliant shooting-star moments.

  DAY 162

  I drink coffee bitter black to remind me that it is a wonderful luxury not to be made mediocre by repetition. As a wilderness guide in the Idaho desert, I was hungry and ate mice, rats, snakes, deer, porcupines, and marmots. Nothing tastes so good as cooked meat when you are really hungry, when your body is craving protein, when a voice hidden way under a lot of cultural evolution still yells Eat meat now! How excellent to fall into my body’s physical hardware. I’m so sick of the psychological hard drive. When the body rules, when that primal voice speaks, I can’t help but listen. It’s like having God talk to me—inarguable, completely in harmony and perfect.

  I hope everyone gets to feel it, the righteous burning that God wants them to do this or that and that they are just a vessel, a means through and for which living happens, that all their petty shit and even major neuroses can be put aside for something bigger. It’s like a full-moon spring tide—it’s a force, a feeling well worth dying for.

  DAY 163

  It is so windy right now that a strange bird I’ve never seen before is hiding in the harbor. Just twenty feet out from his shelter—a big rock outcropping—whitecaps are flying by. He’s black and white, a seabird, and his bill is sort of thick, hooked, and black, and his head is pointy like a merganser’s. How ridiculous to find a name so I don’t have to look at the creature before me anymore! I have him pegged, page 79 in the bird book.

  In the afternoon we write our “Christmas letter,” which helps us sort out our friends into two categories. First are those who will laugh, and then those who will become concerned.

  Dear——,

  We were gonna write one of those happy finger-down-your-throat letters about the joys of blah blah blah. The truth is: 1) This letter was mass produced; 2) We’re probably only sending it to you ‘cause you wrote us first and we feel bad; or 3) We hope you forgot to send us one so now you’ll feel bad.

  Well, the New Hays Family has had a crappy year. We lost money on the sale of our Idaho house and Stephan has begun saying “No.” (He’s eleven. Feel free to send advice, survival tips.) Wendy continues to “prime” sexually, while I ease into my decline. I got Viagra and that helps some, but I have also upped my Prozac dose to handle the stress. Stephan has begun getting zits. Wendy and I are gaining weight. I’m still losing my hair.

  As far as Christmas gifts go, please send us self-addressed envelopes and we’ll send you a bill (hurry for January Visa statements). That’s what we want, for you to share in our seasonal happiness by paying our bills.

  Our joyful motto for the New Year is “Things would only be a little worse if we was laying down in a hearse.” Secretly, we hope we’re doing better than you.

  With mixed feelings,

  Dan, Wendy, and Stephan

  DAY 165

  Windy night. Walk around the island, grilled-cheese sandwiches for breakfast. Wonderful shortwave radio listening, where I suppose the irony of hearing about the United States bombing Baghdad followed by a commercial about bad breath is lost. They get equal air time, thirty seconds.

  I found the body of the bird I watched yesterday, I could tell it was sick. I looked at it for almost an hour. I certainly could not have designed anything so exquisite, so perfect. It embarrasses me when I compare it to my own creations.

  DAY 166

  Today is electrical-crisis day. The wind’s been north to northwest for eight days now, and the windmill is in its comfy wind hollow behind a hill. (Any jerk can put a windmill where there is wind.) The batteries were down to 8.6 volts this morning, so now we’ve rigged up the three solar panels and can use the laptop. I’m trying to print a résumé, but the converter alarm keeps hinting at insufficient electrical funds and the printer dies midletter whenever a cloud floats by. I have always encountered such exceptional obstacles when attempting to produce a résumé
that I no longer even question my unconscious motives.

  In college I loved going to the table of ten new computers in the library and one by one asking them to count all the books they had access to. They were “fast” then, but now a calculator does more. By the time I got the tenth going the lights would dim and everything would be slowed back to human speed. Even the blinking cursors were slower, and I would know I’d done good in the world that day.

  Another electrical event of great importance was tonight’s unveiling of the Christmas lights. Leave it to a rural Nova Scotian hardware store to have battery-operated Christmas lights. Two C batteries—rechargeable by windmill—will last four hours. We hang them up and it really does trigger a Christmas spirit, like a flow of endorphins. Since it is dark at four-thirty, any lights help.

  DAY 167

  Late at night I often fiddle with a shortwave radio receiver I’ve had since I was a kid. It is best if the sky is perfectly clear and the wind is from the north (less moisture). I listen to music from India, or maybe the news from countries other than the United States or Canada. It is good to hear that things seem to happen outside of this continent. I find my culture to be a tad self-centered.