The Deluge
Hi Friends,
So there we were three hours from Bozeman in the Badlands on a blazing hot Sunday afternoon and a hose split under the hood and started spitting coolant all over the engine...
There I was in the middle of a 16 mile paddle on my board. My pals are ahead out of sight. Wind is shifting hard to the west so straight abeam. Can't stand up anymore. Rain is starting to pelt and lightning hits the water right over there....
Ernest Shackleton's ship, the Endurance, was trapped in sea ice, crushed, and sank in 9,000 feet of water in 1915 around 7,000 miles from where his voyage began. His entire crew of 28 men were left stranded on the ice.
The dark side of the moon is not real. It's not a thing. All sides of the moon get the same amount of sunlight. What is real is the "back" side of the moon. Our moon is gravitationally locked to the Earth. Being 81 times more massive than our closest dance partner means that round rock is going nowhere but around us. However, the moon makes the Earth wobble. The Earth spins around its axis, as you know, day/night la la la, but that axis is also rotating in a conical path doing what is called "axial precession." Picture the path of a gyroscope as it's slowing down. We take around 26,000 years to complete the circle and this explains why today's North Star will not be the same for your great great great great great great grandkids. But while doing this there is another circular squiggle in the path of the axis called "nutation." This word is from the Latin for swaying or nodding and defines another wobble of the planet that makes a complete cycle in about eighteen and a half years. And finally, there is the Chandler Wobble. Yet another small wobble exists, first identified by Seth Carlo Chandler in 1891, caused by changes in the Earth's mantle and core and atmospheric and oceanic angular momentum and melting ice sheets and tectonic subsiding. Its effects occur over a fourteen month period.
What we experience as normal -- dawn, daytime, nightfall -- is the same. Lurking in the simple rotation of our home is the bizarre and the extraordinary; and this is where all stories start. It's the wobble. Everything was fine and dandy until... You see, normal is not normal. Even the mundane of day and night is full of twirling anomalies. There is no true path. The stories that define our lives are the wiggly bits, and chaos is EVERYWHERE. Cycling, circling. We cling to routines as comfort amidst the havoc. Even the simplest rhythms can break into exhilaration or injury or a chance meeting that changes EVERYTHING. Since one can't see the future, consider that today may be a day you will never forget. Today is a wobble. Who knew?
Schuyler and I fixed the split hose by talking to folks in a grocery store who sent us down the street to meet a chap with a garage and a big heart. It changed the timing of our little tragic moment such that we made Bozeman just as the sun was dropping behind the Crazy Mountains. Montana sunsets, yes sir!
I sprint paddled to the shore, crouched, and got drenched in the cold deluge while the squall howled over and off. Got back out on the lake and paddled home where my concerned pals cheered that I wasn't dead yet.
Shackleton? Well, just read the book "Endurance". It's a spell disguised as a book that will alter your life. You can touch his lifeboat in the basement of the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan right next to Anighito, a massive meteorite. Go ahead and touch a 34 ton rock from space that just dropped from the sky one day.
So be good. Be kind. People are dealing with wobbles. Remind yourself that forecasters are guessers, that what is going to happen is a total mystery. A pandemic, Pink Floyd, Fukushima, the discovery of free energy, a cure, Mt St. Helens, a working tokamak, hurricanes, rocks from the sky, meeting the love of your life, writing a song that eventually everyone sings, someone standing on the moon... Ridiculous, right? Nothing is more ridiculous than I am made of stardust and typing. Nothing.
It's all light my friends. Keep in mind the above when you look at the moon tonight. Hovering, calm, reflecting...And keep all this in mind when you read the newspaper. Get a puppy. Go for a hike. Call your mom. Buy some art. Find the comfort in the chaos. The wobbles will continue.
AND the first one to respond to this missive will get a third off of price on anything in the website. Don't hesitate. The second to respond gets a quarter off.
Spring!
B Mac
P.S. This may sound silly, but please read these blog thingys out loud. They have rhythm and pop and intentional stumblings that require breathing and enunciation. Ciao.
