Becalmed

During those early days when my blue sloop and I were first getting to know each other, I found the wind was an ever-present friend and I came to count on it. I beat into it, ran with it, or sailed sideways to it on a broad reach, confident that it would always be there, that it would never let me down. Is it perhaps an all-too-human frailty to suppose that a favorable wind will blow forever – that it will never die. But I indulged myself in that deception for the truth is that while the breeze was in my face or on my back I found it impossible to imagine what it would be like to be caught in a dead calm. I knew that the wind might stop – I had heard of such a thing. But I regarded it as one of those unlucky conditions of life, like disease and death, that happen to others, not to me.

(…) I developed a grudging admiration for the bird, for his silent powers of perception, for his uncanny patience and capacity for solitude. It was as if he knew that before he could leave his perch he would have to pass through his desperate calm. As I observed him, my dead dissolved and in its place arose an awareness of my surroundings, of myself, that was far more acute than when I was plunging mindlessly though the waves. I realized I didn’t have to do something; I had to do nothing – that was the unalterable condition imposed upon me by the god of the winds. I had to remain as unhurried as the heron and wait for the breeze to return, as I knew it would, although I knew no better than the bird when it would blow or from what quadrant of the compass.