One day or day one. You decide. – Paolo Coelho
Knocking off a few projects this weekend. Have some big projects still in front of me. This quote hits the mark on a few levels. At the root it’s message of beginning instead of waiting for the right time is dead on.
Onward.
Looking out at Buzzards Bay again tonight, and it occurred to me that I’m likely going to spend more time here in the winter and spring than I will this summer. Strange to think that, but the reality is I only have so much vacation time and the family’s demand for the house is very high in summer. Nothing shocking in that I suppose.
Winter brings its own benefits. No traffic, no lines at the Lobster Trap, no mosquitoes… but no swims in the bay, no reading a book on the beach while the sun dries you off, no casual deck time. But I’m on the cape, and it’s hard to find anything wrong with that.
It occurred to me that many of my bucket list places to visit skirt the outer edges of populated areas. I’ve written about a few places that are literally the edges – like the precipitous cliffs of Portugal and the easternmost point of the North American Continent in Cape St. Vincent, Newfoundland. I love being in places like that, and I’ll continue to seek them out as long as I’m able to.
I’m as eager to see Torngat Mountains National Park deep in Labrador as I am to see Paris. I’m looking forward to visiting London later this year, but anticipate the Northern Highlands of Scotland just as much. I want to see New Zealand as much or more than I want to see Hawaii. And while I love the energy in New York City, I adore the stillness of a forest or the beach in winter.
Perhaps I’m a loner at heart. That doesn’t mean I don’t thrive around people, but I don’t need people to be content. I appreciate solitude. Which is a good thing since the bulk of my job puts me alone in a car or a hotel room. I’ve become self-sufficient in travel, and in many parts of daily life. Stick me by myself in a garden weeding and I’m just as happy as I am when I’m at a family party. I think that level of contentment within your own mind is a good thing. I don’t need noise to drown out my own thoughts.
Maybe I should have been a lighthouse keeper. Or a meteorologist on the summit of Mount Washington. Or a solo through hiker on the Appalachian Trail. But then again, I’m a traveling salesperson, a gardener, a solo walker, a rower. Isolation isn’t the aim – I greatly enjoy those I’ve built my life around and banter with those I’ve just met – but when I need it it’s a welcome partner in my journey deep into the soul.
There’s a several scenes from my favorite movie Local Hero that I replay in my head. This scene is on the beach, while Mac and the locals wait for Ben and Happer to finish their long meeting in the beach hut. They all pour brandy into styrofoam cups and Mac offers a toast:
Mac: “Well, sláinte, everybody.”
Locals: “Eh? What?”
Mac: “Sláinte?”
Russian: “skål!”
Local Scot: “Skol!”
All: “Cheers!”
I’m familiar with sláinte. And in fact I just wrote about it on St. Patrick’s Day. But Scol was something I wondered about… So I had to look it up of course. According to the online Dictionary of Scots Language:
Scol(l, Skoll, n. Also: scole, skole, scoall, scoill, skoill.
[Only Sc. till the 19th c. Norw., Dan. skall, ON skál, whence also Scale n.1
Perhaps, OED conjectures, ‘introduced through the visit of James VI to Denmark in 1589’.]
A drink taken as evidence of the drinker’s good wishes for the welfare of another person or other persons; (a person’s) ‘health’; a toast; also, the cup or glass from which the health is drunk. Also, scoll of drink.
As an American saying sláinte! in St. Patrick’s Day toasts it’s easy to feel a bit like you’re hijacking a phrase that doesn’t belong to you. And maybe that’s why Mac’s toast and the local’s confused reaction resonates for me. We’re all just posers borrowing clever phrases. But since we’re all just raising a glass to the good health of those we’re with, I don’t think they’d mind all that much.
A darker origin of the toast may come from the Vikings, who would drink from the skull of the tribal leader they just killed after battle. This was a tribute to those who fought well but lost, and helped ensure that they would enter Valhalla. They apparently would chant skol! Skol! Skol! as they went into battle, and then enjoy a toast to the fruits of their labor in the skull of the vanquished leader. I think I’d prefer the styrofoam cup, thank you.
Last day of winter. As winters go this one was pretty mild. I’m okay with that. I haven’t embraced winter this season like I have in some other seasons. No skiing, no sledding, no ice skating, no winter hiking…. and no complaints. I like all those things and hope to do them all next winter. But this winter, or at least the last 24 hours of it, is just about over.
I hope spring is kind to us.
March 17th is of course St. Patrick’s Day, and Boston celebrates this day as well as anyone with the parade in South Boston and taverns overflowing with Irish and Irish-for-the-day revelers. But Boston has another reason to celebrate the day that is unique to the city. On March 17, 1776 Boston’s long siege ended as the British evacuated the city and sailed to Halifax. Boston has marked this date forever since as Evacuation Day, and it remains a city holiday to this day.
The siege may have continued on indefinitely had Colonel Henry Knox not pulled off the Herculean task of hauling cannon from Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point to Dorchester Heights. The British had the naval strength to continue controlling the harbor, meaning the siege was an inconvenience but the loyalists and British in Boston wouldn’t starve. It was only when they saw the cannon on Dorchester Heights that they realized the dangerous position that put them in and chose to pull out.
There are many people who roll their eyes at Evacuation Day as a city holiday. They surmise, perhaps correctly, that it’s an excuse to have a day off for the drinking, parade and extracurricular activity of St. Patrick’s Day. But if you’re a history buff it’s a great day to celebrate.
Today is Evacuation Day at home as well, as both kids head back to college. This is bittersweet of course, but ultimately a necessary rite of passage as they both move deeper into adulthood. My hope is that they get safely back to school before the drunks hit the road after a long day of celebratory drinking.
Cheers. Or to your good health. Whatever. “Sláinte” is your typical Gaelic toast when you clink glasses and have a drink with your best friends or your best friends for the moment. So on this St. Patrick’s Day, let me take this moment to say sláinte to you!
Long Island Sound is an estuary between Connecticut and mainland New York on one side and Long Island on the other. This body of water is renowned for its fast currents and shoals, which earned it the nickname The Devil’s Belt. The most famously difficult portion to navigate was the narrow inlet between the East River and Long Island Sound, known appropriately as Hell Gate.
Three early explorers mapped out this region between 1527 and the early 1600’s. Giovanni da Verrazzano was searching for the Northwest Passage after Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe a few years before. He made one of the earliest maps of the North American coast from Florida to Newfoundland. Verrazzano noted the mouth of the Hudson River and the coast of Long Island. He may have sailed into Long Island Sound. More than 80 years later in 1609 Henry Hudson famously sailed up the Hudson River but also explored north to Cape Cod. And a couple of years after that Adriaen Block sailed from the East River into Long Island Sound and up the Connecticut River. Like Verrazzano, he also explored what is now Rhode Island. Block Island is named after him. Block is thought to have named Hell Gate upon sailing through the narrows. He called it “Hellegat”, which in Dutch means “hole from hell”.
Long Island is 118 miles long. Long Island Sound is not quite that long, but pretty close. It’s 21 miles wide at it’s widest point. The mouth of Long Island Sound wasn’t much easier on mariners than Hell Gate was, with The Race, the 3 1/2 miles between Fishers Island and Little Gull Island, being the site of rapid currents as the tides changed and water entered or exited Long Island Sound. The sound is popular with fisherman and sailors alike.
In the summer of 1951 an adventurous young man named George Post sailed out of Shinnecock Yacht Club in a 16 1/2 foot SS 114 to do something audacious. George decided to sail around Long Island, but in typical George Post style, he planned stops along the way at Long Island parties. George was something of a Great Gatsby with his adventurous and fun-loving spirit. He had friends meet him with a tuxedo to change into for the party, and then the next morning it was back to sailing.
George sailed northeast out of Shinnecock Bay, rounded Montauk, past Orient Point and down Long Island Sound towards New York City. He had friends drop beer and food in floating packs from a plane. George sailed past Rikers Island, and into the East River and Hell Gate, dodging floating debris and barge traffic in the East River until he finally got past Manhattan. I can imagine what he thought when he sailed past the Statue of Liberty, rounded Brooklyn and sailed out into the Atlantic Ocean. And I can imagine what everyone else was thinking when this 20 year old kid sailing a small boat floated past them.
George made it back to Shinnecock, called his mother to pick him up, and got back to being a young adult on Long Island. He was the older brother of my step-father John, and I’d had the opportunity to meet him on a few occasions over the years. I wish I’d been more familiar with this story then, and I wish I’d asked him a few questions about it before he passed away. He was every bit the adventurous spirit that Verrazzano, Hudson and Block were, and his younger brother is, and it would have been fun to learn more about that side of him.
One of the biggest heroes for the American Colonists in the Revolutionary War in 1776 was a fisherman from Marblehead, Massachusetts. Actually, he was more than a fisherman, he was also a cordwainer (shoemaker), rum trader, merchant and notably, the first Captain (of the Hannah) in the Continental Navy a later in the war he commanded forces at Saratoga and served with distinction there as well. But it was and as the Commander of a brigade known as the “Amphibious Regiment” that John Glover became a legend in the history of the American Revolution.
Glover’s group of fishermen and merchants saved the Continental Army twice in New York with strategic evacuations from Brooklyn and later from Manhattan. These two evacuations saved the Continental Army from certain defeat against far superior numbers. These weren’t the battle hardened troops of later in the war, these were undisciplined troops led by Generals, including George Washington, who were being outmaneuvered by the British Generals. Glover’s fleet of small boats shuttled the entire army across the Hudson River to Manhattan and then to New Jersey in the cover of darkness.
In December of 1776, Glover’s Marblehead men once again became heroes in shuttling the Continental Army across the frigid Delaware River to Trenton, and then back again with 900 Hessian POW’s. Glover’s fleet pulled off some of the most impressive amphibious maneuvers of the war, equalling the British invasion of Long Island in seamanship, and perhaps surpassing the British with their sheer audacity.
At some point I’ll update this post with pictures of John Glover’s statue in Boston and his home in Marblehead, Massachusetts. For now, I’m taking a moment to appreciate this war hero, rum trader, merchant, fisherman and yes, cordwainer. Glover is one of the legends of the American Revolution and should be more widely known today.
In the Southeastern corner of Brooklyn, New York is an oddly-named village named Gravesend. The definitive origin of the name is lost to history, but it’s generally agreed that it comes from the Dutch phrase “Count’s Beach”. This was part of New Amsterdam in the 17th century, and it remains one of the only place names in Metro New York that still holds a Dutch-origin name. Go up the Hudson River and you’ll find plenty more.
Gravesend is [sort of] famous for two things. First, it’s the location of Coney Island Amusement Park, home of the gag-reflex hot dog eating contest every 4th of July. Given the date this event happens there’s some irony in the second reason for Gravesend’s fame. It was the site of the British landing in the summer of 1776 when the British and Hessian forces swept across Long Island and Manhattan and gained control of the critical New York Harbor and the lower Hudson River.
On the morning of August 23rd, 1776 the British invaded America at Gravesend Bay. By noon of that morning more than 15,000 British troops made an amphibious landing on the beaches there, and brought with them 40 artillery pieces. They quickly moved into the interior of Brooklyn and taught General George Washington and the colonial army a lesson in strategic military moves. Washington looked around days later and realized that there was no hope and evacuated his troops from Long Island. That evacuation is a story for another day, but needless to say, the defense of the American colonies hadn’t gone as planned. So on the 4th of July, when strange people consume massive quantities of hot dogs dipped in milk, think about American hopes for a brighter future being dashed in Gravesend in the summer of 1776. It’s okay to look away when they show it.
