Back in May, I wrote about my aspiration to be unencumbered. What I didn’t write about is that at the beginning of the summer, my husband and I wondered, now that we have paddle boards, how much will we care about taking the sailboat out? We pledged to sail when we wanted to, but not to feel obligated to sail just because we had a sailboat we’d invested time and energy into.
Weekend after weekend, my husband threw the paddle boards on the top of the car while I packed a bag with sunscreen, towels and snacks. We drove to lakes and reservoirs, and even drove over to Chesapeake Bay for a three-day paddling weekend. True to my aspirations to minimize stuff, I did not even take my laptop on that trip.
Weekend after weekend, we did not hitch up the sail boat, did not drive it to the lake, did not spend half an hour stepping the mast in the parking lot, did not jockey for position at the boat ramp.
Some days as we paddled, we talked about how it would be a nice day to sail. And yet, we were paddling instead. We’d remember how good it felt to sail, and then we’d remember all the work that went into trailering the boat, the stress of the squirrelly wind and powerboat wakes on the lake, and then we’d dip our paddles into the water and glide in the silence. It was just as nice to paddle, and it was a lot less hassle.
When the end of August rolled around, and our sailboat sat next to the house, unmoved since the end of last summer, we decided it was time to find it a new home. We sold it to someone who was excited about it, an experienced sailor who will love it and sail it.
And we, now, are that much freer. The sale of the boat means no more trailer, no more boat maintenance, no more sail bags and cables and lines. No more mast repairs and hardware replacements, no more stress about whether the wind is exactly right for a good day on the lake, no more 30-60 minutes of prep and breakdown at the beginning and end of a sail, no more restrictions of needing to find an Airbnb with a dock. Without a boat to trailer, we can have the side of our house back for a wood pile (the wood is currently a steep walk up a hill to retrieve), and we’re no longer locked into the kind of car we have, if we wanted to get something smaller.
I feel lighter and nimbler. One step closer to being unencumbered.
My husband and I love the water. We met in the Florida Keys on a marine biology field course, and we both feel the pull of the ocean from our home in the Appalachian mountains.
The nearest salt water is more than four hours from us. We can’t get to it in the morning or evening for a walk on the beach, or in the afternoon for a quick swim, or any time to body surf or listen to waves crash and gulls cry.
To ease the separation, we started sailing on nearby mountain lakes. The air smells different from sea air, and the spaces aren’t as wide open as the ocean, but a lake is water, and our sailboat gets us out on it.
Last year, we tried a new way to get on the water. For Father’s Day, the kids and I took their dad to nearby Fairy Stone park and rented four stand-up paddle boards. We laughed, splashed, glided, laid on our backs on the boards with our hats over our faces.
Next thing you know, my husband and I have our own paddle boards.
We took them out Sunday for the first time this season. It would have been a good day to sail, too, but the paddle boards are easier. Plus, my husband found a reservoir nearby with limited power boat traffic, so it would be quiet and wake-free — a perfect place to paddle. With the boards, there is no trailering, no stepping the mast, no jockeying for boat ramp position. Once we got to Carvin’s Cove, we plopped the boards in the water and took off.
Over the years, we’ve started to notice how much of a burden stuff can be. Even stuff we we like, like our house, and like hobbies. I love our home and obviously I love my garden, but they’re both a lot of maintenance. And the bigger something is, the more maintenance it requires. Similarly, hobbies that require a lot of equipment become high maintenance. I used to be into cycling, but it got to be a hassle, what with all the gear, and having to find a good place to ride, and drive the bikes there, and then you have this dumb helmet and clacky shoes when you need to stop and get a snack, and you can’t leave the bike because it might get stolen, and you have to ride for hours to get a decent workout.
I eventually ditched the bike and switched to running, which just requires running shoes, clothes that wick sweat, and a half hour of time. I can go right out the door, and I can do it when I travel. As my husband pointed out, walking is even simpler: you don’t even have to change clothes. As long as you’re on land, traveling by foot is the most up-close-and-personal way to explore.
Similarly, my husband and I did a lot of SCUBA diving in our earlier years. After a while, the heavy tank, the gear, the limited bottom time, and the dependence on dive shops to get us to moorings all became burdensome. With a mask and snorkel we could get what we wanted — to see the underwater world — with our bodies free both on land and in the water. With a mask and snorkel, you can walk anywhere there’s water access and just get in and go.
Today I felt that same freedom with paddle boarding. Getting the boards on and off of the car is the most complicated part. Once you’re in the water, you can go anywhere, with no stress, little risk, and pretty much no limitations for water depth, proximity to shore, stopping and starting, and jumping in. It’s just you, your paddle, your leash, your board, and the water, right there, inches from your feet.
On the quiet of the reservoir, I heard the dip of my paddle blade, the rat-a-tat of ripples on the bottom of my board, the wind in the trees. When I saw flowers on shore, I paddled up to them and used my foot as an anchor so I could photograph them. When I was hot, I jumped in. When I wanted to do nothing, I sat on my board as if it were a beach blanket.
Relaxed in a cove
Mountain laurel on the bank
Cycling, SCUBA diving, and sailing definitely offer a more intense experience. You can go faster and deeper and farther with them, and I do like speed and depth and wind on my face. But the unencumbered way gets me the main thing I want and with a lot less hassle.
I love feeling unburdened. The more I experience it, the more I want to cultivate it in more areas in my life. I’ve purged almost all of my physical books, for example, and carry my library with me in my e-reader. As I think towards the day that will come when our kids move out and it’s just the two of us again, I wonder, “Could we just take off for a few months and be nomads? Live out of backpacks, go wherever we want, whenever we want? Explore oceans and cities all over the world without having to rush back home to maintain everything?”
When I ask that question, I look around and think, how much of this stuff do I really need? How much do I even want? The only things I need are the things I use on a daily or weekly basis (toothbrush, laptop for work, clothes), the things I want are the things I choose to use on a daily or weekly basis (e-reader, notebooks and pens, camera). I’d need to figure out my fountain pens and notebooks, but everything else could realistically fit in a backpack.
I aspire to feel as unencumbered in my life as I do on the paddle board. I want to be free to start, stop, poke around, and move on to a new place when I get the urge to wander.
I should know by now that I like to switch things up. My blog is named after my tendency to flit, after all.
For years, I’ve kept paper journals. Lined paper books that I write in with pens. I started out with pretty journals, some with leather covers, or with Japanese wood block art. After a while, I transitioned to 59¢ composition notebooks: they’re less expensive, I felt freer to dump my brain into them, they stack better, and they take up less room on a book shelf.
Recently, though, as I think about spending significant time in a much smaller space, potentially the size of a boat cabin, I am working to minimize physical stuff. I want to have fewer things, and I want the things I possess to be high quality and contain multitudes. For example, do I want 30 square feet of physical books weighing who knows how many pounds, or do I want hundreds of books in a single 7 ounce device I can carry in my hand?
Likewise, do I want shelves and shelves of handwritten journals that I’ll never look at again? And that when I do want pull paragraphs from, I have to first find them, then transcribe them to my computer? Or do I want to go directly to my computer, a single device that contains it all and eliminates the step of having to move words from paper to screen?
I’ve experimented lately with writing a diary directly on my computer. I love it — no mess, no bulk, no regret that I wasted a tree for something I’ll likely never look at again, and it’s searchable.
I haven’t been doing any creative writing, though. That’s what I used to use my paper and pen for. I’d use my prompt box, Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, or Priscilla Long’s Writer’s Portable Mentor to get me started, and then I’d either write from the prompt or work on an exercise from one of those writing books.
It occurred to me the other day that there must be an app out there to help get writers started. What I really wanted was all of the Writing Down the Bones and Writer’s Portable Mentor exercises in an easy “tap to pull a random writing exercise” type of app, but I didn’t find one of those.
What I did find, though, was a mobile app called Prompts. I’ve been using it for a few days, and it’s mostly doing what I want. It is lightweight and straightforward — I don’t have to read instructions to learn how to use it, I just tap the + button in the app and it opens an editor with a prompt at the beginning, like “I crave.” What I love about the prompts is that they aren’t just objects like most of the prompts in my prompt box were. Instead, they are thought-provoking:
Without the Internet
Life is about
I wonder what would happen
The one thing I don’t like is that the app is mobile only, and I detest typing on my phone. I have a small phone, and I don’t want a larger one. So I’ll often read the prompt from my phone at writing time, and then do the actual typing on my computer.
That being said, when I sat in the competition pool bleachers yesterday for 5 hours, I got bored, opened the app, and wrote. So I guess it’s doing its job :-).
Butterfly Mind 