“As the wind comes, they hoist ‘the white sail’, the sail fills, ‘and the wind and the helmsman guide the ship together’. It is an act of cooperation between man and the world, a folding in of human intention with what the world can offer. The ship is a beautifully made thing, as closely fitted as a poem, as much a mark of civilisation as any woven cloth, and the wind in the Odyssey, when it is a kind wind, is a ‘shipmate’, another member of the crew. It is not the element in which you sail but a ‘companion’ on board. The human and the devine dimensions of reality meet in it.
And now, when I am out in the sound, and the right wind comes, I think of it like that, as something else to be welcomed aboard. That coming of the wind is a moment when you can’t help but smile, when the world turns in your favour.” — Adam Nicolson, The Mighty Dead

There is something transcendent about being on the water—for it is here that we experience the interaction between the infinite elements and our fragile place in the world. And it’s a sure sign of spring when I look longingly towards the water. Back in my rowing days, we’d break out of the boathouse as soon as (and sometimes before) the ice was completely off the river. By this time in March, we’d be well into our rowing season and preparing for the first races of spring.

As a rower, the wind wasn’t a friend but an adversary. You learn to deal with it, which is never a good thing to say about a healthy relationship. Later, as a sailor, I put aside my differences and began to have an admittedly dependent relationship with the wind. A sailor needs the wind far more than the wind needs the sailor, after all. But every sailor knows when the wind wants to dance with you, and when the wind wants to dance, you ought to dance.

All of this talk reminds me that it’s been a long time since I’ve had a boat of my own. When I add up the time I was actively rowing with the time I was actively sailing, it occurs to me that I’ve been off the water far more than I’ve been on it. Yet it’s still a large part of my identity. Perhaps it’s foundational, like school—something that shapes who we become but not something we return to once we move on from it. Perhaps.

Then again, maybe it’s like having a dog. Dogs come and go from our lives. When they’re gone we miss them deeply and adjust to our time without one. When we bring a new pup into our lives, we celebrate the void they’ve filled even as we’re chagrined by the disruption of routine and occasional destruction of home and garden that follows. A boat can cause similar disruption and destruction. No, a boat isn’t going to dig holes in the garden, but it can distract you from it long enough that the weeds take over.

The thing is, reading passages like Nicolson’s doesn’t help my garden’s prospects either. Whether we dance with the wind or seek to avoid it in favor of still water, the water nonetheless calls. So too does the world. Now, as a land-based creature most of my days, the wind still whispers to me: Decide what to be and go be it. When the wind wants to dance, we ought to dance.