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It was almost as if he were still out there on Lake Revelstoke, drifting in his Tubbie on the flatlined surface of a tideless sea. Colin had turned north of town to the Five Mile Boat Launch Recreation Site—a 15-minute detour, but what was that in the great scheme of things? If it saved him the hassle of finding a suitable boondock in town, he’d be more than happy. It had taken the Dumpster longer than expected to install the front ‘and backside’ cameras on the Rialta, so Colin pulled into town late and would have no time for sightseeing before he bedded down.
He’d opened up Google Maps, went to the ‘Boondocking Revelstoke’ lookup, and there it was, the Five Mile Boat Launch Recreation Site, just 15 clicks up the Big Bend Highway. It looked especially appealing in satellite view: a big parking lot with only a few vehicles in it, on a long stretch of virtually uninhabited highway, beside a mirror-calm body of water—if the sidebar images in Google Maps were to be believed. And why should I doubt them?
Reality lived up to its images, for once. He parked, did a quick walkabout, decided the place met his boondocking criteria: out of sight and out of mind, not likely patrolled by cops or bylaw enforcement officers, largely disused between sunset and sunrise, quiet, safe,possibly even legal… he hoped.
Still recovering from his premature birthday celebration, he napped before preparing himself a late dinner, then settled in for an evening read. The sun was already declining below the mountain ridges to the southwest when the idea took hold: A midnight paddle!
Colin jolted upright.
What? Are you crazy? Hermes protested.
You don’t have to join me if you’d rather not.
Great! So I get to choose between drowning with a latter-day Ancient Mariner or starving to death, entombed like a Mayan servant in this dilapidated hearse?
A bit melodramatic, don’t you think?
I try not to think too much around my mad captain. It scares the crap out of me. How will you see where you’re going, or be seen while you’re trying to get there without capsizing?
I’ll take the yak down while there’s still some ambient light outside, and wear a headlamp while we’re out on the water.
Defeated, Hermes curled up into a snooze ball and pretended to sleep.
Colin hurried, wrestling one of the Tubbies off its rack atop the Rialta, and hauling it down to the Five Mile boat launch in the fading light. He left it there, along with the paddles and life jackets for himself and Hermes.
Don’t know if I want to take little big mouth along for the ride, he grumbled. I’ll have to think about it. Hermes, if he was listening in, maintained radio silence.
There would be plenty of time for Colin to make up his mind. The window for stargazing would be after 12:30 a.m., when the ‘true darkness’ of the night sky would reveal the glimmering swath of the Milky Way to best advantage—The sequinned hem of a galaxy’s skirt against the backdrop of infinity, he imagined. A whirling dervish, spinning on the axis of euphoria, achieving centrifugal climax.
Centrifugal what? Hermes mocked.
Shut up and go back to sleep.
I was only pretending to sleep.
Then go back to pretending you’re really asleep, cretin!
I am untainted by the epithets of a madman!
You are too stunted and dull to attempt putting into words something incomprehensible.
Such as?
Infinity, eternity… words that define knowledge beyond the realm of comprehension.
Having made his preparations, Colin decided to catch a little kip. He made up the Rialta’s bed and stacked the pillows so he’d be in a reclining position, then read for a while until, without setting an alarm, he fell asleep. “Kay sera sera,” he mumbled. If the spirit moved him, he would awaken and paddle into the dead of night.
Revelstoke Lake is about half a kilometre shore-to-shore at the Five Mile boat launch, an easy paddle, even in a Tubbie. But at night? Colin set his headlamp to red, so as not to interfere with his night vision. And he left a light on in the Rialta to serve as a beacon he could set course for if he needed a layline reference to get back to the boat launch.
He’d awakened to the silhouette of Hermes watching, waiting.
Are you going to behave? Colin asked.
Yes.
Okay. Let’s go.
The lake was perfectly calm. Colin didn’t want to disturb its utter tranquillity or the silence they moved through.
Heraclitus, Hermes reminded.
Yes, Colin agreed, imagining himself a fluid being, a wave passing through an imperturbable medium. He angled his paddle’s blades so they entered the water without making a sound, hardly breaking its surface tension; drew back into each stroke gently, with just enough force to maintain the kayak’s momentum through its liquid element. Hermes, squatting on the bow, maintained a respectful, almost reverent silence, and Colin was grateful.
I’m a ghost!
A manifestation of spirit, Hermes corrected gently.
Colin slowed his breathing, inhaling imperceptibly, exhaling in long, drawn-out sighs. He leaned back in the kayak’s seat until his worldview became entangled in the glittering river of the Milky Way, a southeasterly slash of starlight in the spangled sky.
You’re not looking up.
What do you mean?
You’re peering into the very centre of our galaxy. There is no up or down where you are at this moment. Only here and now in this instance of infinity and eternity.
Why does that matter?
Because awe is that agape-moment when we realize there are things we can define, but cannot comprehend.
Why does that matter!
Because striving to know and understand is the state of mind that makes us uniquely human, and that quest ‘to know’ will never end.
That doesn’t make sense.
Of course not. Our existence has no purpose other than ‘to be’, and to try and make sense of our being as we become memories.
Colin’s span of minutes and seconds drifting on the lake seemed an eternity; his rapture, staring into the heart of the Milky Way, a perspective from the rim of infinity…
He awoke suddenly, with a start.
“Hermes?” he cried out, his voice dissipating into darkness. “Hermes!” he yelled.
How had his companion gone overboard without him knowing, without a yelp or a splash?
What? Hermes answered crankily, squinting into the glow of Colin’s headlamp from the bottom of the kayak, where he lay, curled into a snooze ball between Colin’s legs.
“God! I thought I’d lost you,” Colin breathed a sigh of relief. “Are you ready to head back?”
Hermes didn’t deign to answer, except with a grunt, followed by an accusing silence.
Colin scanned the slouching hulks of the darkened, mountainous shoreline, looking for the Rialta’s feeble light. “There,” he pointed the tubbie’s bow toward a distant twinkling pinprick, which lay farther south than he’d expected. He paddled hard, wondering how long it would take to reach the centre of their galaxy at the speed they were going.
An eternity, Hermes groaned. Which is half as long as it’s going to take for you to get us back to shore from here.
~~~
To: CynthiaPetersonArtist@gmail.com
Subject: Day 8 on Rialta Road – Stargazing
From: Call-In-P-Terson@gmail.com
Hello, My Love,
I wished you were with me more than ever last night. On impulse, I decided to take a stargazing paddle onto Lake Revelstoke with Hermes. We’re boondocked in a public boat launch five miles north of town. It was a perfect night, and the lake was mirror-calm; it seemed too exceptional an opportunity to let slip by.
No light pollution, no buildings blocking the view, no smog, nothing impairing our vision… all of which lent experience and meaning to the definition of the word ‘agape’ as we peered into the ‘dome of heaven’. Entranced, we floated a long way from the boat launch before coming-to and paddling back to our point of departure.
Hermes, as well as being a snarky, barky, disobedient pain in the ass, has become quite the philosophical canine. He reminded me of my own strongly-held belief that ‘there are things we can define, but cannot comprehend’. Until now, that has been a theoretical, abstract affirmation; looking into the heavens, realizing the most distant galaxy I could possibly see is over 2.5 million light-years away, astounded and confused me.
Astronomers and physicists describe the intricate, eternal balances between matter, energy, space and time. They theorize and make predictions based on the brightness and movements of stars and the jiggling of atoms. But they can’t possibly comprehend the scope and scale of the firmament they define. Their most powerful microscopes can’t magnify and make visible the stuff of the universe; and there is no telescope that can expand our experiences of space and time into something real—something other than convincing abstractions.
As you know, I am an atheist and existentialist. I can, however, appreciate the urge to believe in god—a being who not only comprehends the vastness and complexity of space, time, and energy, but embodies it as the soul of the universe—a conscious entity who makes sense of everything, and promises us a place in his eternal, infinite matrix…
And therein lies the supreme irony of life’s malicious cosmic joke. For as much as we want to encompass the vastness of space and time in our puny minds, we want to deny its opposite: the utter negation of death, the ‘nothingness’ that existed before we were born and swallows us whole when we die. We cannot imagine nothingness, the nullification of being that haunts us.
You see what’s happening here, sweetheart. I have blundered into what has become my perpetual conundrum, a place where there are no stars in the sky; no cool night breezes tickling my skin; no shushing of sibilant leaves; no fragrances or flavours drawing me toward flowers and fruit. I am imagining myself dead, and am horrified to think the love of my life, the centre of my universe, has dissolved into this nowhere—that her beautiful soul has evaporated and she no longer exists… except as a memory.
That cannot be! I am me in you and you in me; that’s the heart and soul of the matter, love. So I foresee my own passing with dread, not only because my consciousness will dissipate and vanish, but my memories of ‘you and me’ along with it.
Missing You
Always.
Love, Colin
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