The Rower At Sea

Half-way between Meadow Point and Point Wells, where the neighborhoods of North Seattle meet the shore of Puget Sound, the land curves away to the east in a bight lined with parks and houses. To the south the shores of the Sound - Meadow Point, West Point, and Alki Point to the east, and the islands of Bainbridge, Blake, Vashon, and Maury to the west - stretch off in a blue line down to Point Defiance and the Tacoma Narrows. From here, if one turns and looks to the north, far off, one can just make out the tan bluffs of Scatchet Head on Whidbey Island.

At this midpoint a rower, pausing at the oars, exists in a world of water, disconnected from the community. Keep rowing north for long enough and the sheltered waters of Puget Sound will lead out through Admiralty Inlet and into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and ultimately to the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. Yet here, a scant mile off of the beach, the immediate divide between land and water separates the individual from the group while maintaining that relationship at close remove - a contiguity which forces us to confront the boundary between “self” and “other”.

Our land-bound selves are complex animals, full of contradictions, self-delusions, half truths and conflict. Ashore, it can be difficult to discern which parts of our identity are truly self, and which are merely aspects that we adopt to satisfy some external demand, or expectation, or bond. These ties may be accepted willingly, they may be rooted in love or respect or friendship, but thread by thread they weave us into a pattern that is not entirely of our own design. And once we are so enmeshed, we may find that we have become the pattern. That we can no longer identify a true self, that our every thought and action stems from a pull on one thread or another.

The water allows no such illusions. For the distance rower there is only the boat, the oars, and the sea. All action is condensed to the simple, precise motions of the stroke. All thought is subsumed into feeling the blades slip into the water at the catch, the boat move evenly through the drive, the clean, even pools created as the oars leave the water and flash inches above the surface, back to the starting point. And again. And again. Until the pattern fades away and only the self remains.

There, in the moment of reawakening, the rower is free to choose a course. Continue north, rowing through the dusk as the lights of the houses begin to show - points of yellow and white against the darker line of trees above the beach. Row onward under the night sky. The stars, planets, and satellites overhead are cold but undemanding companions, and the rising moon lights a path to an unknowable destination. Or turn and row back while the late afternoon sun flashes off the waves and lights up the shore. Willingly resume your place in the pattern, and take joy in the ties that bind us to each other - father to son, husband to wife, friend to friend.