This Spring has presented some very welcome advances for me and with a little love and luck, Spring will melt into Summer and it will be a step away from the turmoil of 2013 when the evils of politics set out to sink my ship. They succeeding in sinking the Good Ship CCB, and this Captain nearly went down with it, but a quick lifeline from the USS Chowderpot and very welcoming new billet for the the season have set me back on a course for success- this time perhaps not under sail, but under power.
My aim for this summer is to prepare to leave this bitter coast for the more welcoming winds of the little latitudes (as JB likes to call them). My mode of transport has yet to be fully determined, but I should have more news of that in the coming days. The destination is also a bit up in the air because it is not my concern where I make land half as much as it is the voyage getting there.
From last fall when I got my first tastes of the ICW, I have dreamed about exploring its reaches down to St Somewhere in Florida. It turns out that I have plied its waters in Connecticut for a great many years, but it was not until I assisted with a delivery from Sandy Hook, NJ last Spring that I realized the interconnectedness of all things salty, from Boston to NJ. As our visit to the Gowanus Canal Canoe club evidenced last year, we live on a series of shores and islands amid of soup of pollution where one might walk from Boston to Manhattan to Cape May without ever wetting ones toes. It is this pollution, the development and the aura of elitism that has caused us to lose our connection to the Sea as a people of the East Coast.
At the Gowanus, we talked to one paddler who echoed the sentiments of so many who live along the East Coast- "we live just feet from the water (here in NYC) but you'd never know it from shore". I ran into that sentiment in so many places I visited over the last year, so many voices of contempt for our separation from the Sea. So many people who know nothing of what lies just feet from their homes, that is until it climbs up and laps at there front steps in the next Sandy.
My aim is to foster a reconnection to the Sea for all peoples on the East Coast of the USA. And I will attempt do that with this blog as that is what I have now to use. But I also hope to also use the dynamic tools of social media, cell phones and video to share with the world the hidden beauty that sits so close, but may as well be on the moon for so many.
Because it is not just about the aesthetics of living by the Sea that we should appreciate and love. The Sea affects our daily lives in so many ways from weather to health to environmental justice. And the Sea will dictate our future as it grows over the next century and lays claim to so many communities along the East Coast. By learning about, loving and culturally reconnecting with the Sea, namely the North Atlantic, we will grow as a people with the Sea and reconnect with that part of us that came from the Sea.
I dont know if you have ever noticed the change in attitudes as one gets closer to the Sea- you can see in the comparison of faces on the South shore of Long Island vs the North Shore. You can see it as you visit the stops along the 195 corridor to Cape Cod. And you can see it when you chat up the dock hands in Sandy Hook vs the dock hands in Stamford. The closer you are to the sea, the better your quality of life, the ease of your soul and the happier you will be.
Well that's my theory anyway and I aim to prove it. Not so I may prove that I am right, but as I have always served my common man, I feel it could be my way to make us as a family of the world more whole. Thank you.
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