Left of west, north of normal.
Words, photos & captions :: Brian Hockenstein
Inhale diesel fumes. Exhale the ungodly perfume of two dudes who haven’t showered in three weeks. Tune in to tune out at the speed of a brisk Sunday jog.
Boating large distances—in this case, the length of the Central and North Coasts of British Columbia from Vancouver Island up into the impossibly lush Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska—forces a meditative state of existence that is hard to find in between the incessant stream of notifications and so-called technological advancements competing for our attention.
When your top speed is five knots (just shy of nine km/h) your relationship to time and space shifts dramatically. Your senses are forced to slow alongside and retreat into a natural state that, apparently, is lying in wait at all times. So it goes.
In my relentless quest to run away from normalcy and financial stability, last summer I decided to turn what was supposed to be a one-week trip (to volunteer with an amazing youth organization called See Stories) into a three-month escape.
Without much thought or any real planning, I set my course north in early June from my adopted home at the northern tip of Vancouver Island aboard my aged but trusty sailboat, the SV Estera, a 60-plus-year-old 30-foot sloop built in the late ‘60s. I can best describe the Estera as a boat where everything works perfectly and something breaks every day.
Sailing north, I soon found myself face-to-face with some of the most rugged and uninhabited spaces I have ever witnessed. My only goals and expectations were to marinate in it all like a sponge in a cosmic bathtub.
Slow is not the opposite of fast. It’s the opposite of numb.
The trip became a waking meditation, traveling at the pace of a sea snail. A daily scamper with just the right amount of entheogens in my system to keep things fanciful. Wind and weather forecasts dictated my schedule. Life at sea requires a brave form of simplicity that demands respect and attunement, something I had no idea I craved so deeply until I was well in the glorious thick of it.
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Entering the state of flow for not just minutes, or even hours, but days and months, gave me a glimpse into what the human spirit becomes when it is given nothing to optimize, no signal to chase and all the time in the world to simply witness.
That sound of a whale’s breath. The setting sun shaping the waves that roll unimpeded from distant shores an ocean away. The fishy, catastrophic smell of a cacophony of sea lions.
These are the kind of things we are destined to miss when we travel at a more “civilized” speeds.
A long, slow boat trip—like any meditative endeavour—is an opportunity to train your soul as much as your mind. And it turns out that can be a hard thing to come back from. What I learned on this five-knot meditation is that slow is not the opposite of fast. It’s the opposite of numb. And that somehow this relentless forward churn and blunder of so-called modern life has become our default, our status quo, the “normal.” Except I never actually agreed to that, did you?
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