More Tips for Happy Living

The Way of the Superior Man, A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire 

By David Deida 

Debates will never end about what’s right behavior in love. Answers will always be contested, proposals always countered, disagreements always rise. But it always helps if when you fight you sound like a new-age troubadour. 

Here we have The Way of the Superior Man, A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire, talking about What Women Want in a way that would lead to violence at cocktail parties. You know the talk: When women say this they really mean that. You want to respond to her this way but you should really respond that. Dangerously general statements, you see. But because they sound so Jungian and mytho-poetic here, they seem to work. They seem to get away with it. Thus: 

“A man shouldn't tolerate bitchy and complaining moodiness in his woman, but he should serve her and love her with every ounce of his skill and perseverance. Then, if she cannot or will not open in love, he might decide to end his relationship with her, harboring no anger or resentment.” 

Or: 

“The feminine is the force of life. The more masculine a man is, the more  his woman's feminine energy (as opposed to other qualities) will be important to him.” 

Because I am long out of school and far past concern for logical rigor I will skip the griping, and only say what I often say in cases like this: These ideas are interesting whether or not they are true. Meanwhile they might be fun to try. 

Know your facts, then distort 'em as you please

Random notes on Bill Bryson.

Bryson manages to be suspenseful and desultory at the same time, something not many thoughtful people would ever strive for. He relates the history of a certain common home feature—quite rivetting in the telling, actually--by first emphasizing the strange niche in his hallway wall, a niche clearly not part of the original house, because the object it was designed to hold did not exist in 1765. We don’t learn he’s talking about the telephone until many pages later, after the suspense has gotten heavy.

Then we turn to Alexander Graham Bell and his odd story, and then to his assistant Thomas Watson, and his even odder story, and then to the reason why Bell didn’t have his invention stolen from him by his competitors, as happened so often, and then how the telephone was designed, and then why there are letters on the dial, and so on. There is apparently no guiding principle at work, but a smoothness in segueing between nuggets of interest. In some cases there is not the faintest causal connection between his contiguities. There is danger in this, of course. One is led almost to infer a chain of causality from the the chain of events, as if the events actually unfolded in the order Bryson relates, and not the order he has chosen to enliven his story.

I have caught Bryson in some stretchers. In The Lost Continent, an account of his driving tour of America, in the section where he visited Philadelphia, he threw down scorn about the place that stood out in a book already wretched with it. He was describing the block in town that had been consecrated to the memory of Franklin—a section of Market Street, where Franklin’s old print shop still stands, and where the outline of his house, long since demolished, has been rendered in tubular steel. Almost every tourist in Philadelphia visits the place. There’s a museum devoted to Franklin there, and a Post Office that still handles mail, where Franklin’s signature forms the cancellation mark. That’s where he said he was, anyway. The problem was, he was describing Franklin Square, a rundown and derelict old square several blocks away, where the west end of the massive Benjamin Franklin Bridge comes to earth, and where weeds grow, and debris drifts, and a general air of abandonment and decay makes this the least congenial spot in Old City. Whether he knew he was in the wrong place or not is a good question. It makes the difference whether we should call him a fibber or just plain dense. In any event he did not concern himself to learn why, in a place where it was advertised he would find a museum, a print shop and a post office, he found only trash and desolation. Only very accomplished writers have this kind of privilege.

And Those Who Study History Are Doomed to Misconstrue It

  
How Should We Live?: Great Ideas from the Past for Everyday Life
 

by Roman Krznaric

It’s tempting to say—so I’ll go ahead and say it—that this is one of the first bold thrusts of a no-doubt-soon-to-be-popular kind of thinking, and we shouldn’t carp that it grows straight out of self-help literature. I’m talking about “lifestyle philosophy,” the attempt to find a way of living, though it be unconventional, that maximizes personal fulfillment and remains friendly to the planet.

Lifestyle philosophers—god forgive my language—lifestyle philosophers go beyond your typical self-help fare—remain positive, work and play well with others, exercise frequently—to question why we might wish to follow this advice—to ask, indeed, if it be the best advice after all.

A lifestyle philosopher is willing to question certain always-unquestioned premises—more is better, easier is better, faster is better, a rewarding job is naturally the best way to spend one’s life, entertainment is the best recreation—and, after a gentle tap with a hammer, knock them to the ground. Lifestyle philosophy promises the twilight for some very popular idols--if anyone takes it seriously. And it is not stamped out by the police.

So you will find nowhere a list of bullet points saying smell this or eat that. Or reach your target weight by June. Or smile as you claw your way to the top. Instead you will find discussion, always interesting though sometimes off track, that serves as prelude to the hints he offers for living a richer life. The suggestions he offers, I have no doubt, will provide a rich trove of new possibilities to those unsatisfied with their current lot, and will no doubt go down in the annals of lifestyle philosophy when such annals come to be written. (I suggest writing them in pencil.)

To name a few:

•    Try to lessen the “tyranny of the eye,” and develop the other senses. This will bring a fuller love of that ambrosia of life we so often quaff without tasting.

•    Carefully evaluate the place of market activities in your life, including paid employment. We all believe that time is money, that time is wasted if not exchanged for some improving medium, such as cash. At least we act as if we do. But this concept has captured us only very recently. Before the Industrial Revolution self improvement had nothing to do with labor, or money accrued. Perhaps a better quality of life is available to those who search this question.

•    Give your traveling a deliberate meaning. Don’t be in thrall to your guidebook. Travel in the guise of a nomad, a pilgrim, an explorer. Krznaric offers suggestions how to do this,  but the baseline intention is to add a spiritual component to your journeys.

“We ought to spend time travelling, giving ourselves enough headspace for contemplation and going at a sufficiently slow pace to appreciate the beauties and sorrows of the landscape, whether it is a mountain range or an inner-city slum. Forget the car: put on some straw sandals and start walking under an open sky.”

•    Be brave enough to challenge your beliefs. As Nietzsche said, it’s nothing to have the courage of your convictions; what takes courage is to attack your convictions—an edict this book clearly takes to heart.

•    Reject the social norms and develop your own perspective on the art of living.

•    Find satisfaction in doing more things for yourself. In other words, be creative where you can. Cooking, for example, is a great channel of creativity and a means of self expression. And it hasn’t been taken out of the individual’s hands by an industry.

“Creativity does not require the bestowal or inheritance of genius. Above all it requires the self-confidence to believe that we are capable of finding ways to express our uniqueness.”

•    Bring the shrouded aspects of life—in other words, death—into the light of day. Why can’t funerals be as creative as marriages? Why can’t we develop our own rituals of death to substitute for the festival approach to death that is now in steep decline?

It’s not difficult to range Krznaric’s book among others Instructions For a Happier Life. The difference is, he claims history as his justification. And I’m not sure it works.

I am all in favor of sleuthing out how civilization has stolen a person’s means, and eventually his desire, for expression. Commerce has co-opted the creative. Singing in public is now rarely done except before a karaoke machine. The creativity once exhibited at Halloween within living memory been replaced by a shopping opportunity. But how history can justify personal behavioral changes--how vast chronicles of the political and military movements of a people can suggest one small twitch for modification—goes beyond me. One might as well say history justifies dumping sewage in streams

Nevertheless, Krznaric is onto something big. He has opened some big questions it behooves all of us to ask. How many of our social conventions disrupt the quality of our lives? How much of what we’re taught isn’t true? Can we reject these unquestioned conventions and live better? Most important, he has rescued history from inclusion in that squash-all-debate refrain about how, no matter how awful it is now, in the past it was worse.

As Krznaric shows, it often wasn’t. For that we owe him a lot.

Manly Men Doping Around

The Sea Wolf by Jack London

I like Jack London. I really do. But sometimes you gotta wish he paid closer attention to what he was doing.

The Sea Wolf is supposed to be a sea tale, a kind of Moby Dick with the focus on Ahab. And it works, to a point. To a very limited point. This Ahab happens to be "materialist," in the language of the early 20th century--meaning he doesn't care much for deep thought and sentiment and stuff that can't be measured. If Ayn Rand had been to sea she might have come up with this character, Wolf Larsen. As it is, he's disjointed composite of Howard Roark, Gordon Gecko and a poor understanding of Nietzsche's superman. He takes what he can get, kills when he can, cares nothing for convention, for morals, for "sentiment," as he calls it. He is strong and intelligent.

We meet him after the narrator, a literary critic named Humphrey, falls off a ferry and gets rescued by him in his seal-hunting schooner, the Ghost. Of course, a man like Wolf Larsen probably wouldn't rescue anyone just to save a life, but he needs a foil, someone to banter with. Humphrey provides that.

I won't go further with the plot, except to say it is as unbelievable as any you will ever see. I would rather talk about London's peculiar style in this work. Somebody needs to.

There is hardly a page in The Sea Wolf where the author does not botch a decent effect by undermining it with some contrary idea a little later. There is hardly a page where a good description is not negated later by a poorly chosen and mitigating word. I call it inattention.

In Chapter 9, for example, we are told that Mugridge, the Cockney cook, is a coward, shortly later that he is brave. His was “the courage of cowardice,” I kid you not. His intimidation of Humphrey by sharpening a kitchen knife in his presence is "ludicrous"—until a few lines later when it is "serious". He is far too timid to actually use the knife, but this very timidity might prompt him to do it. A paragraph later, when he stabs another man rather than Humphrey, who had been the object of his wrath, his face is livid with fear and so he becomes—I am not making this up—domineering and exultant.

“The psychology of it is sadly tangled,” Humphrey tells us, “and yet I could read the workings of his mind as clearly as though it were a printed book.”

Possibly. But if so, he is the only one.

At one point in Chapter 12, several men are chasing Mugridge so they might seize him up and tow him behind the ship. Mugridge resists by running away. He had little stomach for a dip, we are told, “as the water was frightfully cold, and his was anything but a rugged constitution.” Two lines later he is flashing along the deck with a “nimbleness and speed we did not dream he possessed.”

There then takes place a bit of stage business that demonstrates Mugridge’s agility, though not in the way London probably hoped. Mugridge is being chased by one Harrison, and is springing like a cat to the tops of cabins, shinnying down scuttles, racing through rigging, and in all ways moving like a young and agile ape, to avoid being thrown in the water. Harrison is “at his heels and gaining on him.” Then:

“Mugridge, leaping suddenly, caught the jib-boom-lift. It happened in an instant. Holding his weight by his arms, and in mid-air doubling his body at the hips, he let fly with both feet. The oncoming Harrison caught the kick squarely in the pit of the stomach, groaned involuntarily, and doubled up and sank backward to the deck.”

Now I am as credulous as any reader, but in this case I must crave an explanation for how a man being frantically chased can suddenly grab hold of a line above his head, double at the hips, and kick the man behind him in the stomach. I have run through this action many times in my imagination and can only conclude that 1. Mugridge was a contortionist and could double himself backward or 2. London was eager to finish writing for the day and get drinking.

And as for Harrison groaning involuntarily, well, yes, I imagine he did. I am certain it was involuntary and I’m certain it was more than a groan—more like a bark or a grunt or a shriek—some expostulation more urgent than a groan and entirely beyond the groan category. It was a sound that was punched out of Harrison, kicked out of him, not squshed by slow pressure as a groan would have been. I also don’t wonder that Harrison “doubled up and sank backward” after being kicked in the stomach, though people in that situation more often fly backward than sink. Let that pass. This is a story thick with unusual characters exhibiting unusual behavior. Perhaps this is the proper way to behave aboard the Ghost.

There are many more examples, but we need not continue. I’ll only say I’m glad there is plenty more of London's writing to represent the man. If this were all he would never have gotten out of Oakland.

An End to All Your Worries

This week, a new feature: Ask Cosmopolitan Magazine.

Dear Cosmopolitan Magazine: I'm an independent young woman trying to be more sociable. I don't know much about your magazine except that it contains many photographs of extremely beautiful couples who appear to be about to have sex, so I thought you might have some advice. – Unsure

Dear Unsure: We have all kinds of advice for you. We publish 12 issues a year of advice just for you, dear, sweet, upwardly mobile but still insecure Cosmo Girl. Please refer to our special 21-page section in the May issue, called "Understanding Men," which contains such interesting articles as "The Joy of Polarity Sex," which does not involve electrical sockets no matter what it sounds like.

Also read articles such as "The Mysterious Male Ego (Yes, it's Big)," wherein we give you many examples of women having trouble making their men function properly because they, um, because they - well, it's not clear why, but you'll love the snappy graphics.

Also please find the article wherein we discuss the four male personality types - Bad Boy, Good Guy, Brainy Man and Sexy Hunk - based on the four celebrities we happened to have pictures of this month, including, if can believe this, Microsoft President Bill Gates.

This should clear up any insecurities you may have and replace them with entirely new ones.

Dear Cosmo: I'm looking for a way to spruce up my appearance. Any tips? -Feeling Drab

Dear Drab: Fashion and appearance tips are a crucial part of our monthly fare. Any time you need inspiration, please consult our cover photograph, which every month features a beautiful woman constructed mostly of petrochemical products.

Environmental tip: Many of the beauty products advertised in our pages may also be used in home renovation.

For those on a budget: You can save money on fragrances by rubbing the magazine directly against your chest.

Dear Cosmo: What is the biggest challenge to you as a magazine? - Curious

Dear Curious: I would say it's finding two or three hundred different ways to run the same story about breaking up.

Dear Cosmo: What is the most bizarre insecurity you can find to write a story about? - Still Curious

Dear Still Curious: This month it would be the story about dealing with jealous bridesmaids on your wedding day.

Question: What about bizarre advice?

Answer: That would have to be the story on page 166 about how to faint in moments of high emotional drama. This article cautions, however, that you shouldn't attempt to fake faint unless you've practiced at home on a rug.

Question: How many subscriptions did you say you sell?

Answer: So many it's scary, friend.

How to Speak Good

Greetings English speakers! Today we'll talk about getting orientated toward language, so that next chance you get you'll speak real good in public and absolutely wheeze all kinda class and refinement, and have a positive impact (KABOOM!) on your listeners.

It's very important to speak good, when speaking to others. Fluency in speech confers upon the speaker a sense of education, earnestness, sobriety--a sense that this person actually paid attention in English class, and is therefore probably a starchy little weasel-eyed prig.

If you get beat up because of this, speaking clearly on the phone to the ambulance people will increase your chance of getting quick medical care. So. A few points and pointers for effective speaking in public:

When speaking to another person, it's important to use correct word forms--and we're not talking about just in public but anywheres. You should use the proper word forms irregardless of what your friends say. Hopefully, you'll also use correct grammar, not just any old grammar laying around. 
In constructing your sentences, try not to be redundant, saying the same thing twice or even three times, thus repeating yourself over and over and over again.

Use words that have some legitimate history of use in the English language, and not words you've completely made up, such as "tribiculate."
 
(To "tribiculate" is to write on something using three ballpoint pens.)

While we're on the subject, do not use other words you've made up, such as:

- Wieroin. (noun. A kind of weathervane.)

- Nastacular. (adj. Un-amazing, un-excellent. Vehemently ordinary. Used to describe disappointing events, events which did not live up to their advance press, such as national elections.)

- Spondacious. (adj. Delightful, delicious, often used to describe ice cream.)

- Elgoto. (A Peruvian hotel chain.)

Also, don't use words people think you've made up but didn't, such as:

- Conglobatio. (adj. Gathering into a globe or ball.)

- Callipygian. (adj. Having shapely buttocks.)

When delivering a public address, follow this procedure. First, get the attention of your audience somehow, either by clearing your throat, or by holding your breath and making your eyes go white like Li'l Orphan Annie, or by shaking your (callipygian) behind around, or by holding up a large automatic weapon. Then, wait a judicious interval. (A judicious interval is the space between Jewish people.) 

Then, speak forcefully, in a resonant (full of resin) voice, building your arguments carefully, pre-empting objections, covering the premises thoroughly, and arriving at your point with that strong, reverberant, elephantine certainty which signals that this speaker, indeed, has taken the audience in his hand, and made them go to sleep.

While they're dozing, take their wallets. 

One last point on speaking to others. Remember the old saying: You have two ears and only one mouth. What does that say about the ratio of talking to listening? 

Of course. You've got to talk twice as much as anyone wants to hear.

Virginia City

Now it’s true the place looks the part--both exactly as you’d expect and startling.

As you arrive over the last little swale into the mountain town, 1875 is suddenly spread out before you, like a late chromo of Currier and Ives, if Currier and Ives had been western prospectors: Long wooden sidewalks, their planks athwart the now-invisible muddy trenches, covered with sloping roofs to make a long colonnade down both sides of the street. Big airy rooms inside grand picture windows, with high patterned ceilings and chandeliers of tinted glass, a flamboyant saloon every 50 running feet, gaudy storefronts emblazoned in the grandiose lettering of the gold rush.

And it’s true you get howdy’s from folks in the street, from folks who probably have a right to say howdy, and wear cowboy hats and dungarees, though stricter gun laws won’t allow the revolver at the side, which would complete the picture. And, oh yes, it’s true that Virginia City plays the part of the wild west mining town, wild in action and wild in speculation, the greatest American boom town of the 1870s, to perfection for the tourists.

But a great deal remains unexplained.

Lookit. Here’s a town lodged high on a mountainside, away above the clouds, like Machu Picchu or Shangri-La, connected to the outside world by a couple of steep grades almost useless in the winter, occupying its own atmosphere. It’s one of those places where the meridians cross or the vibrations resonate or the chakras align, or however you might want to account for the fact that people arrive here and their eyes go wide and they settle down in an old shack or a hut and go to work in the library and depart nevermore.

Perfect example: Diamond Jim, manning the Visitor Center desk most days of the week, came here after a double homicide next door in Stockton California persuaded him it was time to leave. Ditto Terry down at the Silver Queen Hotel, who also came from California but without a double murder for persuasion.

Something cozy, something close. Like the wooden sidewalks and their covering of roofs. Or the narrowness of the street. Or the compactness of the locale, its size constrained by the rakish angle of the earth at this spot. Or the isolation of being alone on a mountainside with the world far below, the all-for-one-and-one-for-all of an exclusive commonwealth whose membership requirement is only that pair of wide eyes.

Oh yes, there is history. One of the great silver strikes of the world took place on this spot, the Comstock Lode, discovered in 1859 and not entirely mined out yet. Remember the Hearsts, as in William Randolph? That fortune started here. Ever heard of San Francisco? The money made here largely built it, and then rebuilt it after the earthquake. Do you know the state of Nevada? Statehood arrived soon after Virginia opened its first saloon, and largely because of the money here.

And there is fame, yes, there is fame. Step right up to the curb in the Crystal Bar saloon and view the tourist brochures mounted on the very wood where George Hearst, Dan DeQuille, Joe Goodman and Sam Clemens all contemplated the first happy drinks of the evening. Across the street is the office of the Territorial Enterprise, at one time the most influential paper in the west, where most of these gentlemen worked. Clemens devoted a big part of a later book to life in boomtown Virginia in the early 60s, when mining shares were trading like quarters and a chance encounter in the street could make you rich.

But the place has other sorts of appeal.

In the current office of the Territorial Enterprise, for example, you will find scaling the north wall a pair of parallel panels and the remnants of a pulley system. These are all that is left of the dumb waiter that for many years moved copy, printing plates, galley proofs, and probably whiskey among the three floors of the building. The foot of this dumb waiter resides in the basement, among artifacts of the small Mark Twain museum and the ancient printing press, still anchored like grim death in the bedrock of the basement floor.

It is this dumb waiter that lets all the ghosts in.

Ghosts, spirits, phantomlike entities, ectoplasmic exhalations, whatever you might want to call them, and whatever might be their provenance: Ghosts invest the town as thoroughly as any deluge of tourists. It is thought—at least by the ghost hunter TV shows that have made this place a favorite—that the dumb waiter is their portal.

Well, for some of them, perhaps. It depends what kind of ghosts you’re talking about. Clearly the portal would be handy for the dozens of miners still lying in the 750 miles of mine tunnel beneath the town. But you must assume that many of the ghosts, like their living co-inhabitants, just found a place in town they liked and settled down.

The Washoe Club, the most haunted place in town, during the silver boom the home of the Millionaires Club, now boasts a museum devoted to many of the ghosts who apparently do not commute from below but who live in the building year round. The ghost of the prostitute in the Silver Queen Hotel clearly needs no portal from the underworld, but can remain cozy and ensconced in the room where she killed herself, and never trouble to leave the building.

None of the spirits in the Washoe Club travel so very far outside their domain, though they do remain quiet for long periods. Perhaps the museum now devoted to them gratifies their ghostly egos enough that they need not stir nor rattle nor shake but for part of the year, and can kick back all the rest of it.

Spirits or humans, ectoplasm or protoplasm, long-term resident or recent arrival, there is an agreement here that life should pause for a while and progress no further. And so far it has kept the spirits of all worlds content.

A Tale of Heroism and Chili

Captain, on the quarterdeck: Well, shipmates, the time has come to tell you the full story of the recent dashing and heroic exploits that culminated, amid great throb and hubbub, in my glorious injuries last week. Sit back, for I shall recall for you such an exploit of courage and derring-do that you shall not soon regain your normal vision, probably.

Crew Member Na'eem: Oh, please, derring-don’t.

Captain: Why, it was at Isthmus Cove’s fair harbor we lay, the wind blowing strong from the fan, and all about us were the telltales of great disasters about to befall. We hove up our anchor, and she cast starboard toward the reef, The jibs rose with alacrity, and the--

Crewmember Lucia: Excuse me, Captain. Did you say we have more creamer? I couldn’t find any. I can’t even find the powdered stuff.

Captain: It’s in the galley refrigerator, the upstairs one. Look on the lower shelf. You might have to look under Captain John’s high fiber cereal.
Lucia: I’ll look again.

Captain: The jibs rose with alacrity, and perhaps also a fine powder of guano, and round she came, missing the reef by mere inches, her nose at last toward the open sea. Sail upon sail we piled upon her, with the breeze fresh on our--

Crewmember Jay: Pardon me, skipper, toilets in B are clogged again.

Captain: What? How can that be?

Jay: Dunno. Pump handle is stuck as a rod. I tried pumping it through but it got hard enough where the water starts to seep out around the hoses, like it did before it exploded on you last time, you remember?

Captain: Yes, I remember.

Crew Member Jay: So I quit that and put the sign up saying use the head in A. The head in A is getting a good workout this trip.

Captain: Well I hope not too much. That’s my favorite toilet, very peaceful in there.

Jay: I’ll keep an eye on it.

Captain: Well, so! With a fresh breeze on our quarter! Our boom was a-laying far out at port, with that breeze wafting us straight--straight, my friends--into the arms of danger! For as we exited that fair green harbor and she felt the first stirrings of the vast pacific beneath her, and the westerlies on our beam, our good ship—

First Mate Connie: Captain? The adult leaders want to land the trainees at Avalon at 5, but that’s not going to work if we want to serve dinner at 6. I figure it’ll take two hours to offload and onload the groups. Plus we don’t have nearly enough chicken salad.

Captain: What do you suggest?
 
Connie: Well, I’ve worked out a few possible scenarios and printed them out in full color using the printer I built from seine twine and old radio parts. Now you’ll see using the first method that we send the first group ashore right at 5, and they immediately deploy to the store for emergency chicken salad. Then they return to the boat while the second group--

Captain: Very good, very good. Do what you think is best, Connie. I cannot possibly come up with a better plan I am sure. Also I find that chicken salad is a strange and not-entirely-attractive concept to me just now. Please you take care of it and tell me what I have decided to do.

Connie: Aye aye!

Captain: And the, um, westerlies on our beam and…Oh yes, and as our fair ship felt the first stirrings of the vast Pacific beneath her keel, and there gloomed the dark, broad seas before as, and we smote the sounding furrows with our counter, then it was that--

Crewmember Eric: Captain? What do you say I mix in some chocolate with the chili we’re cooking?

Captain: Chocolate?

Eric: Chocolate deepens the meaty flavor of the chili while giving a strong base note to the peppers. They do this all the time in the south at chili-baking contests. Sometimes they--

 
Captain: Yes, Eric, yes, yes, yes, put whatever you like in the chili. Put in colyrium, and coriander, and tears of mastic, and unguents and fragrant balms. Throw in a couple pounds of horse radish and some vanilla extract. I know it will be delicious. Go now, Go with my blessing and we’ll meet at dinner and compare notes on our digestion.

Eric: Okay!

Captain: Smote the sounding furrows, and…and….our good ship—

Adult Leader: Captain, when do you think we’ll get back to port tomorrow? The kids want some time to go the candy store, and if there’s a chance they can sing karaoke at the Fish Market they’d like that too.

Captain: CONNIE! Please take over for me, I’m going below and not coming out until September.

Connie: Aye aye! 

 

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis somehow tells the huge story of a collapsing mortgage market--and all the related disasters we know too well--from the perspective of the dweebs, cranks and geniuses who saw it coming, and who profited from it. You can't call it a cautionary tale, because the author, like the reader, finds it too interesting, too outlandish, to moralize over. And it will no doubt happen again, the great boom, the confident knowledge of infinite increase, and the inevitable crash, in some other guise. It's gratifying that the good guys in this story, at least in Lewis's telling, are the ones who refused to join the rush and chose to believe their own eyes. In this age of stampede and chicanery, that's something worth moralizing about.




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Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick


Why is it hard to read this book, especially the second half?

Is it because it describes a bloody war between previously peaceful Indians and colonists, a war that sealed apparently forever the antagonism between the two races, and relegated native Americans to outsider status in their own land?

Yes. And because of the horrendous slow-motion details Philbrick provides of this war, and the convincing case he makes that it might not have happened this way. For emphasized by the author's excellent scholarship is the unmistakeable fact that Indians and colonists lived peaceably together for more than 50 years after the Pilgrims landed. That they eventually came to fight was not foreordained, unless the Anglo Saxon greed for land and the increase of one's material wealth really does shape destiny. Well, no doubt it does.

Americans owe it to themselves, at long last, to get some corrective for the Pilgrim history they learned in high school. For many this will be their first time seeing more deeply into native American character than the textbooks allow, and that depth will surprise them.


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Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz

Let this wonderful book be your introduction to Captain Cook and the culture of love and vitriol surrounding him, even today. Cook was not an American, of course, and so there is nothing absolutely great he could have accomplished in the way of daring and understanding and prudence when exploring both poles and every latitude between on three unprecedented voyages. However, for an Englishman he did pretty well. He charted previously uncharted waters with a thoroughness and precision unmatched until the 20th century. He made friends with most of Polynesia, and opened lands as far-spread as Australia and Alaska to further European exploration, for better or worse. His story deserves to be better known, and what better time than the current age of historical counter-revisionism to know it. And who better than Tony Horwitz to tell it. Horwitz is such an engaging writer and storyteller it's a toss up whether his retelling of Cook's story, or his own modern travelogue and search for the real Cook, is more entertaining. Readers can't lose either way.



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Six Frigates, by Ian Toll

Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy by Ian W. Toll

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Toll tells this story thoroughly and well: America didn't want a navy, and remained dubious even when necessity forced her hand. For a while she acquiesced in the extortion demanded by the barbary states, but then stood up to them--resulting in the loss of a brand new frigate, lots and lots of money, and other humiliations. Other nations thought she was crazy.

And she was, to a great extent. Her new design of frigates had no precedent and freaked out everyone charged with building them. The building itself was an ordeal beyond imagining. The timber cutters got malaria and died in droves. Costs overran, the newspapers printed scandal, the politicians warred. Then the new president halted construction--for a while--and very nearly killed the young economy.

A bit later, an enterprising British force burned much of the capital and a great deal more, and marched overland in a sort of proto-blitzkrieg, sowing havoc and confusion through the states--basically just to show that they could.

Fierce, strutting American officers found their delicate honors incensed, and shot each other at a rate greater than any enemy. Newly minted American captains rolled off the line, some of them very good, others not. America achieved a few spectacular victories in single ship actions, but lost many others, and never had the slightest chance against the greatly superior Royal Navy, as everyone knew.

But something altogether unexpected arose from all this. That was the confirmation of the incredible good luck--some say the divine guidance--that America enjoyed during her formative years. Through all the bumbling and bluster the country somehow got through. And that, according to many, is what makes her exceptional. However, you can see this, as Toll clearly shows, only if you don't examine the details too closely.

White Jacket, by Herman Melville

White Jacket by Herman Melville

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Melville never made it as a novelist--really: Moby Dick and his other "novels" failed, with a failure that still echoes. Possibly that's because he could never shape himself quite to the novel pattern. He enjoyed the facts too much--small wonder, with his own life constructed of facts almost too exotic to believe. He was one of a very few of his time strong enough to visit the far shores and talented enough to paint them, a very rugged, and very American, sort of genius.

But this is too much praise to the America of that age, I think. Melville's allusions, his offhand references, presume a base of classical knowledge rare in his generation and non-existent in ours. Expounding upon those allusions could fill a large book--and indeed that book exists. Its study would make a decent education all by itself.

Yet we continue to treat books like White Jacket as novels, possibly because we have no name for the genre Melville invented, and occupied all alone for a very long time. It was a kind of adventure anthropology, the explication of the unfamiliar through a sharp and thorough eye, told with humor and poetry. No one did it before, and no one has done it since. Maybe no one ever will do it again.

Students of American maritime history should consider themselves lucky that this eye dwelt so long on an American warship of 1841--as it happens, one of the original six frigates signed into being by George Washington. Here, far more thoroughly and acutely than I have seen anywhere else, is the picture of life aboard an American warship in active service during formative years of the mid-19th century.

We meet the people, learn the usages, hear the rolling of the drums to quarters--almost feel the lash. We get more than the flavor of the officers' insolence, and feel the injustice of an essentially British system of discipline imposed on an American democratic ethos. We also see something of Melville the reformist crusader, whose stated objective it was to make known the horrors of flogging to a wide audience. In this, even if the book sold poorly, he succeeded.

As an historical document alone this book is extremely worthwhile. When you add the fact of Melville's authorship, you have a very strong recommendation indeed.

How to Be a Good Writer, Who Will Nevertheless Make No Money

1. Write tight.

I can think of only a few cases where we should prefer loose, billowy sentences over tight ones. Every time you write a sentence according to its first hearing in your mind, be wary: It will probably stand shortening.

Thus, the sentence I am writing right now, hoping to drive home the point that however concise you think your sentence is, you can make it more concise--this sentence I rewrite thus:

However short your sentence looks, shorten it.

In fact, I consider it one of the chief delights of the written word that from a skilled pen it achieves an eloquence far beyond that of the spoken. How many spoken phrases and colloquialisms are diluted by redundancy, vagueness, even contradiction. When you write a phrase you've heard, size it up for surgery. It will carry more punch if shortened. Brevity brings punch. Kapow! Brevity sticks in heads. "If the glove don't fit, you must acquit."

Which brings me to the second key and overstated and obvious point, which I will make anyway:

2. Avoid tired language.

Second City TV once performed a sketch called "Redundancy Theater," in which the characters spoke in nothing but redundancies. They said things like, "We'll hafta kill-shoot them Indian-savages with a rifle-gun." It was good education for the writer, who must take especial caution against the lazy bunchup of affectionate words. Word pairs get tired after a while, like people pairs.

Think of phrases like "free gift," "helluva time," "large and impersonal," "faceless bureaucrats," "elected officials." In writing, these hit harder as plain corporations, bureaucrats, officials. Better yet to find new words altogether. How about group-gropers, apparatchiks and catspaws?

And how many descriptive phrases have lost their shine through common use. "Land of dreams," "halcyon days," "wine-dark sea," "the rosy fingers of dawn." These verge upon the cliche, but do not quite thud. The eye passes over them without concern. They want spark.

You get spark when you squish together words that don't like each other: "Bitter youth," "beautiful blood," "wonderful disaster," "a fit of murderous courtesy." Incompatible words magnetize when brought near each other.

3. Write with active verbs. Using active verbs requires about twice the energy of using passives. Active verbs require the writer to imagine a whole new sphere of causality, and this taxes the brain. It requires imagining the world as a place where subjects act upon objects.

For example, try to put this sentence into the active voice: "There were trees on shore, and the rain was coming down in soft curtains."

You can't do it, can you? This is because description, particularly landscape description, might be the only place where passive verbs work. Thus I refute myself. Pay no attention to me from here on.

4. Avoid the trap, which almost everyone falls into, of saying what you mean. No greater disservice was ever done to the cause of reason than the progress of clear exposition. Mark Twain said, get your facts straight first, then distort them as you please. I do not take this to mean lie, especially in opinion writing, where one may safely speak of an obligation to deal justly with the facts.

I take it to mean, speak from a point of view. Strike a pose. Public debate is a loosely developed sequence of poses. At its best, it is a show of dispassionate postures. Don't know everything. Don't understand everything, lest you dull your rhetorical force.

I say dispassionate because an excess of passion kills writing. And here we come to another big don't:

A corollary: Opinion pieces work as straightforward exposition: Here's what's going on; here's why, and here's what we do about it. But do not discount the possibilities of the rambling essay, the satire, the parody. In other words, often you make a better point with your tongue in your cheek.

5. Don't care too deeply about those things you write about with deep care. Or at least, let your passion cool before you write, lest you betray more emotion than point of view. You don't want the focus to shift from the words you write to the anger of the writer, you see?

6. Don't care a whit whom you offend. We seem to have lost track of the idea that public debate is a kind of dance. I say one thing, you call me an idiot, I say you're a bigger idiot, we dance around. Thus we enact a great dialectic, and parties on both sides enrich the debate while enriching themselves; enrich themselves because they find themselves trying to answer argument with argument, and thereby expose new features and aspects of the question.

In other words, let debate thrive. Say what you like without fear, but extend to others their right to do likewise. I repeat. Do not be afraid to offend people. But decency requires that you do for the sake of greater public enlightenment, not for the sake of assassinating someone's character.

7. Last and most important: Schmooze the editor. Editors are people, despite some very strong indications to the contrary, and a great many of them are miserable little scrofulous dweebs who grunt and grumble and really only want love. So oblige them.

They can accept that you love them only for their approval power. But they appreciate your trying to disguise this fact. Let them know you intend to make their lives as easy as possible, and then do it. And meantime ask how their pet fish are. (Any other companion creature requires a level of care far beyond the capacity of the average editor.)

A major secret, known only to editors: The most effective way to get anything published is to drop in on the editor. Editors are usually so busy they can't address all the work awaiting them, but they must pay attention to someone standing before them, wearing a smile more than a foot wide. Convention prescribes that they be courteous.

Almost all the work I've gotten, I've gotten by means of the strategic drop in. So, try to perfect your stalking techniques. Practice entering, but not breaking, buildings. Slip beneath the radar, sneak into offices. If someone asks what you want, say you're there to see editor X, an old friend. Look confident. Dress well.

You will get published in no time. Then you'll want to do it again. Then you'll be in real trouble.

The Day Boat

Daysailing on a tourist boat? Oh yes! New people to work with, a new boat to learn, new lines to pull. Maybe a little money! Three sails daily depending on the weather, from the big dock in the sunny old port.

Quiet captain. Reserved. His smile is fixed in place with the long practice of hiring new people, and firing them. Effective smile, efficient smile, which it turns out express many moods depending on the situation: the smugness of preeminence over new deckhands, the wrath over something done completely wrong, the satisfaction over contemplated vengeance.

It’s a simple boat, and without trouble you learn the important things to pull, and the best way to pull them. You learn that if you pull them one way, you should have pulled them the other. And that if you pull them the other, there is yet a third way you clearly haven’t the wits to figure out for yourself. Most important, you learn the right attitude for learning, which is this: As soon as anything is explained, take up the task boldly, execute it confidently, and then give it immediately to the mate, for she will not be happy with it. This is good policy. Her esteem for you will grow, the more you prove her value by doing things unsatisfactorily before her.

Her attitude is one of standing disapproval, plus maybe a small dose of physical revulsion, but with a trace of hope. This is designed to bring out the best in her crew. With a single crinkle of her nose she is able to convey very complex ideas, such as the concept that you are one of those people who could not be trusted to put your underwear on straight without help.

The customers line up at the gangway, full of questions, waving their reservation printouts. Once aboard they sit and look bewildered, wondering if it will be like a Disney ride, where a kid in a company polo tells them to strap in tightly and keep their arms in the car. Some of them bug their eyes in apprehension. The wind is now gusting to three knots.

And here comes the richly-tailored lady sprinting toward you as the boat takes in lines, her grandchild ambling ever further behind her. She is not to be denied, she will come aboard no matter how difficult it might be to reset the gangway. And so it happens. The new passengers are welcomed, the gangway struck once more, the ship cast off. Reaching into her purse she announces that she has no cash. But you do take credit cards, don’t you? Surely you take credit cards.

Meanwhile her grandchild has begun working loose a belaying pin. He is a gifted child, clearly. An intuitive child. He senses your unease with his work on the belaying pin, and so his effort increases. When resisted he tries with both hands. When prevented he screams. His grandmother only smiles. A lovely child. He will caper about getting himself into every sort of trouble he can find, showing an arrogance and contempt for others that are remarkable in one so young. Someday he’ll run an insurance company.

Two hour sails. Haul the halyards and hoist the gaffs. Raise the staysail and jib, and then haste to the galley to sell beer, wine, softdrinks and light snacks. Stay in the galley until the captain’s testiness reveals you aren’t required to stay below, only be present when customers come. No, you can stay on deck until passengers appear in the galley. Then you run and sell them pretzels. Unless you’re doing something very important, then stay on deck. The captain will reveal what something very important might be whenever you stop doing it.

In a moment of levity, you urge your fellow deckhand to explain the Bernoulli Effect to the good people aboard. This proves unwise. He plunges into a discussion of high and lower pressure systems around the sails, sometimes putting the high pressure before the sail and sometimes behind, and speaking of the port of the boat while pointing to the starboard, and you begin to hope that you have not invited him to demonstrate what idiots you are before your bosses. Later you understand you should never have done this to this poor man. Never ask him to explain something complicated and never let him tell a joke. The structure will not rise far before falling down upon itself and writhing there in confusion until someone shoots it.

Chat up the guests. There is the usual bunch, the guy who gets launched into a discussion of his diabetes and branches out into back problems, hospital stays, work layoffs where the medical coverage won’t cover, relatives who’ve died of this illness and a similar one where—

There are Bob and Barbara, down from Pittsburgh to visit their timeshare by the big themepark; the retired Navy guy who interrupts the captain to give his own answer to a question about fore-and-aft rigging; Tom and Kathy, sent here by their kids for their 40th wedding anniversary, who speak not a word to each other the whole trip.

There is the old guy who sits alone by the rail watching the water, bemused, nostalgic, faraway. He seems unconnected to anything happening on deck, any other action by the passengers. Someday you will be that guy, you think, lost in your own dreamworld, wandering among large thoughts, or perhaps just heavily medicated.

The end of the day comes finally and, taken all around, all things considered, when you get right down to it, it’s been damned exhausting. But then the tip jar is divided and you go home with a fat wad of bills and maybe life is not so bad.

I grew up among young rivers and soft land. My feet were accustomed to sinking in the comfortable muck. Long days we trudged among the waving reeds, listening to the ooze beneath our soles, believing that if the land said anything, it was that to wriggle out a path, to trudge out a compromise, to negotiate a way among the doubts--one foot down, another reaching for firmness--is a kind of love.

Gretchen, 1999

Gretchen returned from Belize and Guatemala with a tan and many photographs. These lay in piles on her kitchen counter, showing Gretchen in a kayak with a sunset sky in the background, a scrubby beach in a jungle, a Mayan man and woman holding up a fish, a Guatemalan town beneath billowy clouds.

"Here's a good one of me." She showed a photo of herself being fitted into a harness and wearing a helmet.

"That was my canopy walk," she said. "Some university was doing research on the canopy of the rainforest and they let me go along one of their catwalks." She held up another photo of herself, wearing helmet and harness, walking a catwalk miles above the forest floor.

"Here's another good one of me." She held a photo of herself, clad in the briefest of bikinis, walking a beach beneath palm trees.

She flipped through the pile.

"Here's another good one of me."

She showed me another good one of her.

She had gone by air from Philadelphia to Belize City, from there to Punta Gorda. Of course, she wasn't looking for a man; she'd turned over a new leaf. She wanted someone spiritual. She was looking for the right one. Too many men see a blonde bimbo and they don't know what she's like inside. They don't know her spiritual side.

In Guatemala she took a boat to a small town on the penninsula, found a guide, and from there went by a smaller boat across the big bay, up a river and across a beautiful lake to the mountains opposite, then hiked up into a national park in the hills. It was paradise on earth. Then she met a man who offered to show her the National Park personally.

"Oh, really?" I said.

"No he was a spiritual person. I was asking him how I could get to another place I knew of, and he said, `What is your journey about?' So I knew he wasn't your typical I'm-gonna-get-in-your-pants sort of guy."

"I'm sure he wasn't."

"And he's the one who took me. I had him as a personal guide the whole way."

"And just how personal did you get with him?"

"Very personal. I got in touch with him deeply, and sometimes he kissed me. We'd be looking at a sunset and he would lean over and kiss me. Sometimes after dark he would put his arms around me and kiss me. Until I had to take him aside and say, `Now look, we are on a journey here.'"

"Really? Just kisses?"

"All right. I wouldn't tell this to anyone but you. But he wasn't just any guy. I knew from the first day that he wasn't interested in sex. The first day he met me he took hold of me like this"--she took hold of my face, one palm on each cheek--"and he said, `I really care about you.'"

"That sounds pretty genuine," I said. "So he took you into the jungle and he got to kiss you."

“Yes. And then, we had rented a cabana on the beach with one bed in it, and he knew he was sleeping on the floor. The next morning I woke up and he was rubbing my whole body over with oil, and it felt so nice."

"Mmm."

"And then he just turned me over and lay down on me. I closed my eyes and thought, Okay, I guess this is his tip. I wound up not even paying for the trip."

"Closed your eyes and thought of England."

"Yes. Besides, I was still ass over teacup in love with another guy I'd met."

"Ah, so you had a spiritual experience with two men on the trip."

The other guy was a Greek man, in Guatemala doing something like environmental work. Gretchen was walking along the road and saw a very handsome man, whom she had absolutely no designs upon. But it turned out he had seen her in the bar the previous night. They talked. He was a bit dejected because he'd missed the last plane to Belize City and now had 18 hours in Guatemala with nothing to do.

"You have something now," Gretchen told him.

They went back to her cabana and, because she had taken a vow of chastity, told him he could do certain things and not others, but this restraint lasted maybe three minutes, and then it was fiesta time once again.

"It was clear he knew what he was doing,” she said, concerning a certain activity that is still considered a crime in some states.

“And after that, what does he do but pull out a book of poetry and start reading poems to me. I had to love a man who, in the tiny space of his backpack, devoted that much room to a huge poetry book.

"So you see, I didn't violate my promise to stop being wild. Anyway, I don’t think the second guy counts: It was over in less than a minute."

"Clearly the second guy doesn't count."

“I can say I am still looking for the right one and not jumping into bed with the first man I see.”

“That is quite obvious,” I said.

Big Nature

About 20 miles into Sequoia National Park you get to the actual giant trees—the park contains many other marvels of nature—and here things get strange: Trees 90 and 100 feet around, nearly 300 feet high, begin to fill in around you. And then more. And around the corner, more. A forest of giants, primeval titans, and you are a bug.

For a while you take it calmly. But finally it escapes you, that feeling of immensity and wonder that can only find expression in really bad language. “Will you look at the size of these goshdarn trees,” you say, only with a much stronger adjective.

We came to Sequioa when a voyage got cancelled. Captain Mike suggested the trip. After exhausting ourselves with sailing for several weeks, a chance to exhaust ourselves with hiking sounded like a nice change. And so we went: Captain Mike, Laura, A.J., Deon, Brett and me, in two cars and a motorcycle, with about 60 pounds of LAMI food.

Once inside the park, five hours later, we began to climb, leaving the tamped down sole of valley behind, the devil’s footprint that makes a hell of sun on the flatland below. The mountains stand up to you like a wall, and once emplaced among them, the faces of rock become steeper and fiercer, and though you don’t always notice the climb, yet at each turn of your highway the chasm is more frowning and somber.

At every overlook the eyes behold what the mind does not comprehend, a vast canyon of space with the rock faces purpled by distance, and the tiny road by which you have come threading into the unseen recesses below, and emerging again from beneath the rocky outcrops, the connifers in sentinel ranks along the ridges, in the higher places on a groundnote of snowy white.

We did a lot of standing and staring and evaluating the abyss thoughtfully. Several times we resembled an album cover for one of the bands that A.J. is forever making up. The road twisted up and up, and you could look out for miles and see not a single billboard. Which is a shame, really. Just a few apartment subdivisions and luxury condos in this canyon would put thousands of upscale eyeballs in view of unmeasurable messaging opportunity.

And even more so at Moro Rock. God knows what the ancient inhabitants made of this great granite dome rising more than 7000 feet off the valley floor, to brood titanically at the ceiling of heaven. One takes not a single step here without getting the double sense that 1. every inch of this ground is somehow sacred—even the stairway is on the National Register--and 2. perhaps you shouldn’t have eaten the extra pancakes this morning.

Our party tripped happily from its caravan toward the foot of the climb and found themselves not much later tripping awkwardly up the incline. And then trudging up. And then crawling up. Way stations with lookouts and benches strewed the way, and upon these sat the upward bound, lapsed now into attitudes of concern and self-searching. The downward bound didn’t stop. They wore faces of relief.

The top, though, is the paramountcy that meets every expectation of the hard climb: a rocky balcony looming Olympian over the insignificant haunts of men, and even the ravens and falcons gliding below in their humbler sphere.

We teetered out along the fenced-in walkway at the top, out to the end of the rectangular space where a bit of hurricane fence stands between you and a thousand foot drop. And once out there, at one with the blue empyeran, at home in the wild blue yonder, you really want to try to spit or drop a water balloon or something.

We made it back down, dazzled, confused, snow-blinded. And then came the trees.

Until recently, say 1 or 2 million years ago, trees like the Sierra Redwood occupied a vast range across what is now North America. But its range is now a micro-environment, an area of only a few hundred square miles on the western side of the Sierra Nevada mountains. There remain something over 70 groves of them, most under state or federal protection. Nothing seems to hurt these trees but the potential for toppling—and of course the lumber industry.

Possibly they still exist only because their wood, though strong and long-lived, is brittle. Measured by the volume of their boughs, they are the largest trees in the world.

Possibly they also exist because it’s a kick , when one of them falls over, to drive your car along it, or through it, as visitors to the park sometimes do.

This particular grove contains several trees now famous, including the largest tree in the world, the General Sherman. General Sherman measures 101.5 feet around its base, is 272.4 feet tall, and weighs somewhere around 6,167 tons. But the numbers don’t capture it. What almost captures it is what comes out of you mouth when you see it: Will you look at the size of that goshdarn tree.

We rested that night in Grants Grove, one of the subaltern centers of park life, containing a general store and lodge, and surrounded by campgrounds. We passed most of the time eating, throwing a light-up Frisbee in the darkness, and trying various ways to set up Captain Mike’s tent. Expired PFD chemical lights helped us locate each other in the gloom.

If there is a more vital dose of life than camping in chilled air among primordial magnificence I have yet to hear about it. Camping anywhere is probably a good thing. But camping amid the solemness and majesty and mystery of thousand-year-old trees must take the prize. The sun falls on a skyline burning with the orange glow of prehistoric wonder, the ranks and ranks of trees stretching away into the distance, and the slowly gathering night of jewelled stars and velvet sky, the smells of pine and cypress mingling with the campfire tang, and far off the calling of strange woodland birds.

To enter into this wilderness is to step back to an age that well antedates American, that fully precedes Europe, that came long before the modern form of human being, indeed, some one or two million years. One gets a picture of slow moving development in this corner of the world, as if, whether it raged elsewhere in violence or not, whether it really ever did favor the fiercest in other theaters of its operation, here at least the triumph belonged to the slowest and most enduring.

Next morning we piled into the automobiles again and began the long climb to the top of King’s Canyon, leaving behind all things mortal and ground-dwelling.

In King’s Canyon, as in Sequoia, time spent itself in geologic increments--millions of years, rather than the miniscule thousands by which humans measure their achievements. The automobiles climbed, climbed, nearly 9,000 feet. While climbing we sailors—water creatures, you know—had the satisfaction of seeing a mighty river next to us and not being on it.

There are numbered categories of rapids that river kayakers use to rate the “technicality” of their chosen river—in other words the likelihood of their being capsized while paddling, and thrust against rocks and split open, and drowned in whirlpools, and other such entertainments. But there was no category to describe the Godless and Rock Shivering Sluice of Death raging beside our highway.

For miles we watched to see a place where the violence of the water abated, and watched in vain. We saw not one 50-foot stretch in those many miles that did not roar and surge with several different varieties of watery obliteration: boulders, whirlpools, waterfalls, foaming surges, cliffs. If you can imagine three different category-five rapids all fed together and then angled 20 degrees higher, you will have something like it. The many torrents were remarkable in having almost no bearing on the general direction of the river, but all sped different ways at once—some of them seemed to go backward--and the steep walls of rock contained the disagreement.

Naturally we stopped along this donnybrook to brood and be thoughtful. I got out and looked at it, Laura got out and looked at it. A.J., Brett, Deon, Captain Mike, we all stood looking at it. And in every mind there was the same thought: Possibly I could use an inflatable kayak.

Then soon enough we were at the top and then over into the other side, into King’s Canyon. At a certain point in the progress of the highway there, you reach a ranger station called Road’s End, and there is an excellent reason for this name. Whatever march that human progress has made up and into this valley is stopped dead at this point. What progress continues must be undertaken on foot, preferably foot shod in boot.

We exited the autos, checked our water, consulted maps, and then off through the valley of light walked the six sailors. The way led along a piney sand floor among cedars and pole oaks, with sheer rock cliffs of immense altitude added on either side of us to complete the geography. Some two miles out we reached a footbridge crossing this selfsame cataract of water and there we stood for a while, with some of us wanting to press further (you can probably guess who) and some of us remembering important tasks left undone back at the campsite.

I turned around to head back and Captain Mike soon overtook my retreat. Then Deon joined us. Then Brett. And finally Laura and A.J., the last to surrender the march, who bestrode that narrow wilderness like colossuses—colossae?—and scored the furthest progress of our quest.

That night, quiet rest. Next day, a group of French speaking people gathered behind Laura’s car to photograph her license plate (New York). Then, back to the water.