Blue Highways: Somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean

Unfolding the Map

William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) leaves Ghost Dancing on the shore and goes out on a fishing trawler from Cape Porpoise, Maine for a day.  The interest in fishing, or at least the more dangerous aspects of it, has skyrocketed since the success of the reality TV show The Deadliest Catch.  Since one side of my family is a fishing family, it brings back a lot of memories and reminiscences for me.  Warning, my spot on the map is probably not accurate, but it will do.  To see the area where I think the Allison E. may have been trolling around, sail on over to the map.

Book Quote

"Four o'clock:  On the open sea.  Making ten knots, fast enough to raise a wake as high as the transom.  The forty-foot Allison E. rides up the swells and down the other side.  Up, down, up, down...

"Four-fifty:  Lights of Cape Porpoise gone from the horizon.  Eastern sky cold and gray.  Tom says, 'We can fish in a good year only about two hundred days.  Whatever income from dragging we'll earn, we've got to earn then.  We can't ever make up for a day lost...

"Five-thirty:  Rain stops.  Ten miles offshore and towing at three knots over an area in the Gulf of Maine known as Perkins Ground of Bigelow Bight.  Two hundred forty feet below on the mud, sand, and gravel, the net rouses bottomfish as they bump up into the 'sweep' and on back into the rear bag called the 'cod end.'

Eight o'clock:  Sun out....The weight of the net pulls the boat backwards until we are above it.  An aura of anticipation.  A crew gets paid only for its share of the catch.  There are no salaries."

Blue Highways:  Part 9, Chapter 3

Stern of a Cape Porpoise, Maine fishing trawler. Photo by Michael O'Brien and found on his Flickriver page. Click on photo to go to host page.Somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean

In my previous post, I made reference to going out on the ocean in a boat.  I would love to say that, given the fishing and oceangoing history of my family on my mother's side, I would take to the water.  Unfortunately, that has not been the case.

I have referred before to my uncles and perhaps to my grandfather.  They have all been fishermen.  My grandfather was originally a fisherman, and only left the sea for a while during the Great Depression when he became a logger and, when the logging wasn't good, worked for the Works Progress Administration.  His sons, Elwin and Bob, both became fishermen like their father.  My uncle Elwin fished halibut and other bottom fish on his boat Norcoaster much like is described by LHM on his time out on the Allison E. in Maine.  My uncle Bob, still fishing today in his 80s on his boat Kristy, concentrated on salmon and crab.  I remember when they would go out fishing, and the whole family waited for news - did Betty hear from Elwin or has anyone heard from Bob?  My aunt Betty communicated with uncle Elwin via a shortwave radio, as I believe my aunt Cecilia did with uncle Bob.

The lack of any major incidents on the high seas always masked the fact, to me at least, that fishing was tough, tough business.  I suppose I always thought of my uncles piloting their boats through pristine waters at all times.  Sure, other fishermens' boats sometimes sank, but not my uncles' boats.  Very occasionally, a fisherman would die.  But my uncles always came back from their trips.  I remember them often having good trips, and coming back with full holds.  Unlike the Allison E., whose captain tells LHM that the boat is too small to make overnight trips, my uncles would spend a week or more on the water.  They even took part at times in experiments conducted by the government, which paid fishermen to try new fishing techniques such as long-lining for tuna.  On those trips, they would fish their way across the Pacific to Hawaii and back.

As overfishing led to regulations in California, my uncles began to fish farther and farther from home, first off Oregon and Washington.  Uncle Elwin bought a home on the San Juan de Fuca Strait, and fished from there up to Alaska.  When the season went to a week, then down to three days, Uncle Elwin and his crew, which often included his son Bob and even his daughter Gina, cruised up to Alaska and then fished in deep and rough waters around the clock.  I have seen some of their home movies, showing enormous fish on the deck, and crew cutting and carrying them to the hold.

My uncle took my father fishing once or twice up to Alaska, in an attempt to dry him out and keep him away from the booze.  I think it worked as long as my father was on the boat.  When the trip was over, my father just went back to drinking again.  I thought about doing one of those trips myself, signing on as a crewmember with my uncle and earning some good money fishing.  I heard the stories about the poker games on board at night, after dinner and, if a crewmember was off duty, even some alcohol.  There were also stories about "exotic" fishing towns, rough bars, and lusty women.  I just had one small and minor problem.

I have always been prone to motion sickness.

I grew up in a small coastal town where the only way in and out was on winding, twisting roads.  As a child, these roads were torture to me.  We'd carry a coffee can lined with a plastic bag in the car so that I could puke in it as needed.  It took me until I was at least nine or ten years old before I could get past those roads with a reasonable chance of not vomiting.

While I outgrew my car sickness, I suppose I should have been surprised when I discovered, on a cruise vacation to Alaska that my family made on a Soviet cruise ship, that if I was inside and the ship rocked a little, I would get nauseated.  And if the ship rocked a lot, I would be full-flown seasick.

I thought the answer was being outside, on a boat's deck, in the fresh air.  A ferry trip across the San Juan de Fuca Strait from Victoria, British Columbia to Port Angeles, Washington led me into that little fallacy.  It was very windy and wavy, but I had a great time on the prow of the boat as it went up and down, up and down, like LHM describes.  The only time I had trouble was when I went inside, but as long as I was on the deck I had no symptoms at all.

But then, a whale watching expedition out of my hometown that I took with my wife dashed that belief.  On the deck of the little boat, I sat in the back, only occasionally glancing at the flukes and the spouts of the whales as the boat bobbed in the water matching the whales' speed.  I probably should have allowed myself to heave over the side, but instead, I held back the nausea and quietly rejoiced when we got back into port.

I'm afraid that I would not have made a good crewmember for my uncle unless I could have outgrown my seasickness the way that I outgrew my car sickness.  And until then, any fishing trips would have been torture.  I still think twice about taking a boat on the open water, just because I don't like feeling nauseated.  Given all the dangers of fishing, the inconvenience of seasickness seems like a small one, but my uncles always seemed larger than life to me - men who tamed the sea.  It's enough, and amazing to me that they tamed their inner ears and their stomachs while working an immensely dangerous occupation.

Musical Interlude

One of my favorite songs, is about Maine and fishing.  The song is called The Reach, by Dan Fogelberg, who lived in Maine and died of cancer only a few years ago.  At the end of the video, you can see him on the sailboat he owned in Maine, the Minstrel.

This next song is a whimsical one by Lyle Lovett called If I Had a Boat.  I don't know why I include it, except that I like how it mixes two things that are almost mutually exclusive - riding ponies on boats.

If you want to know more about the Maine fishing industry

Fishwatch - Maine Haddock
Historical Maine Commercial Marine Fisheries Landing Data
Maine Commercial Marine Fisheries
Mapping Maine's Commercial Fisheries
Saltwater Fishing in Maine
State of Marine Fisheries in Main 2008

Next up:  Boston, Massachussetts

Blue Highways: Cape Porpoise, Maine

Unfolding the Map

This is the farthest east on land that we will travel - we still have to get on the water a little - but after this Ghost Dancing will be pointed south and east and we'll begin the last phase of the Blue Highways journey.  But for now, we'll sit on the bluff over small cove with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) and reflect on the ocean and how it is a balm for the soul.  To reach the end of our eastern journey, point your finger toward the water on the map.

Book Quote

"...I bought two pounds of steamed quahogs (also called 'littlenecks' and 'cherrystones' when small), walked to Bradbury Brothers grocery for a stick of butter and two bottles of Molson Ale.  I packed up my dented aluminum pot and Swedish stove and headed down through the sumac and wild beach roses to a rocky coign of vantage just above a tidal cove Vikings likely saw.  While the tide went out, I melted the butter and warmed the clam broth, dipped the steamers into the broth and hot butter, and ate, sitting against the granite, drinking the Molson's, watching the water.

"....A westerly had blown in strong, and the little Cape Porpoise fleet was returning early, each boat carrying into the pier an attendant flapdoodle of gulls circling as sternmen gutted the catch, then swooping the water for the pitched entrails."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 2

Pier at Cape Porpoise, Maine. Photo by Paul Simpson and posted at his Amused Cynic blog. Click on photo to go to host page.

Cape Porpoise, Maine

I know I'm not alone in this, but the ocean is one of my happy places.  In about three weeks I'll be heading home for a long overdue visit to see my mom and to attend my 30th high school reunion.  During my ten days or so on the coast of Northern California, you can bet that I will be spending a lot of time by the ocean.  I probably won't get as ambitious as LHM and cook seafood on the bluffs, but I will walk the cliffs, scamper in and out of the coves, check out the tidepools, visit the seal colony north of town, and soak in the sight, sound and smells of the Pacific Ocean.

Being born and raised by the ocean, sometimes it's hard to believe that I now live in a desert, where water is scarce and the air is dry.  The ocean's character, changeable and moody, translates to the weather which itself displays many moods.  On the other hand, the desert presents one with the same face most of the time.  Where I live, in Albuquerque, the sun shines on average 320 days per year.  When I lived near the ocean, I valued sunny days.  Fog and clouds were often the oppressive norm on the coast.  Now, when I talk with my sister and mother and they complain about the clouds and fog, I secretly wish that I were there, soaking in the moisture through my skin and feeling the sea spray and the rain upon my face.  I never thought that sunshine could be oppressive until I lived in the desert.

The ocean always did more for me, however, than just provide character to my environment.  Each night, when I went to sleep, I could hear the waves crashing on shore a mile away.  I could hear the warning buoys anchored offshore, mourning their low sounds with the movements of the waves, and occasionally the bells attached to them.  The sound was background noise to lull me to sleep in the cold and damp night air.

As a kid, I didn't appreciate this aspect of the ocean, though sometimes I would find myself in contemplation of the ocean as we drove next to it on our way to someplace or another.  Now as an adult who lives away from it, I find myself drawn to it in a way that I never was when I lived next to it.  The ocean has become a temple that I don't often get to visit.  It has become my equivalent of a mountain Buddhist retreat.  My trips to see my home are my version of a pilgrimage to a saint's final resting place,  or to the Holy Land.  It is my undertaking of the Haj.  It is not that I worship the ocean...it is not my god though like a god it is filled with moods, mysteries, and is something to be celebrated as well as feared.  But the ocean also provides me with emotional, physical and psychological nourishment and sustenance.  I cannot be anything but contemplative when I visit the ocean.  It puts me in that sort of way.  The sounds of the waves lapping against the shore on a calm day, or the roar of the waves on a stormy day, is a symphony to my ears.  The various forms of light from the sun as it makes it's way across the sky, or the colors that ocean turns, from the deepest blues to the grayest grays and everything in between, is the best mood lighting that has ever been devised.

If standing on the ocean shore, or along the bluffs that overlook it, has a balm-like quality to my soul, then I often wondered what I'd find out there on it.  I'll get into more of that in the next post, but I would sometimes watch the fishing fleet go out of the harbor.  As the boats filed out through the jetty and into the small cove, sometimes a fisherman would wave from the prow.  If it were a foggy day, they would then vanish one by one into the mist, slowly fading from boat to outline to mere suggestion until they were gone.  I used to wonder where they went.  I fantasized what the fishermen might see out there on the gray water beyond the horizon.  I speculated if they would be perpetually stuck in the fog, close in around them, with only a small circle of water that they could see while the rest of the world was gray.  Or, I wondered if they would come out of the fog into bright sunlight, so that our world and our reality was revealed as gray and while out there the real world was bright and sunny and filled with blue water.  My thoughts populated that ocean, just beyond the horizon, with small islands that only the fishermen knew about - little worlds of their own beyond my sight but not beyond my imagination.

Of course, the fleet would eventually come in and, on good days, with their holds brimming with their catch.  My uncles were part of that fleet, and when they had plenty they would share with us - a salmon here, a halibut there, sometimes a couple of crab which my mom would make me clean.  I would stare at the dead crab, its size often about as big as a large manhole cover, and crack it open with my fingers and remove as much meat as I could get out of it.  I imagined that not too long previously it had been wandering about on the sea floor and that only chance and bad luck had led it to the crab cage that my uncle had left on the bottom.  Then, I would take the crab into my mom and would enjoy crab meat on my salad and somewhere in my mind I would be thankful I lived near the ocean, and thankful that I had fishermen uncles who shared some of their catch with us.  As night fell and then settled, I would fall asleep in my room again to the gentle roar of the ocean, a mile west of where I lay, singing me to sleep again with its soft lullaby and the mourning of the buoys.

Musical Interlude

Since Cape Porpoise is a seafaring village, with a fishing fleet, and is closer to Newfoundland than anyplace else in Blue Highways, I decided to throw in something from the band Great Big Sea.  I remember first hearing this "Newfie" group about 10 years ago, and loved them.  Here they sing about Lukey, and his boat, accompanied by the Celtic supergroup The Chieftains.

And for a double shot - much of Taylor Swift's video for her song Mine was filmed in Cape Porpoise.  Enjoy!

And how about a triple shot?  There are a lot of Italians in my hometown, and many of them were fishermen.  Combine Italian musicians with an Irish tune about the sea, and you almost have perfection!  This is the Modena City Ramblers, with their Canzone della Fine del Mondo.

If you want to know more about Cape Porpoise

Wikipedia: Cape Porpoise

Next up: Somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean