A Believer's Journal

When the ball left the right foot of Karen Irasema Luna de los Santos, little did she know. Little did any of us know.

She had collected the ball deep in her own end, her El Tri teammates having dispossessed the American attack. She took a few quick touches and then launched an improbable pass far upfield and across the pitch to the feet of Mayra Pelayo-Bernal streaking up the left wing.

It was unthinkable. It was uncanny. It was brilliant. With her thirty-fifth-ranked side clinging to a precarious one goal lead early in extra time against the second-ranked and perennial superpower United States Women’s National Team, she would be expected simply to clear the ball, to be content with getting it out of her own end, getting it out of trouble, giving her teammates a moment’s pause to collect themselves and regroup.

But she did not merely clear the ball. She sent the soaring, implausible, astonishing pass across the field to Pelayo. She left the match commentators scrambling for words. Did she or didn’t she? Did she mean to make that pass or was it just a case of a rushed clearance that happened to find a teammate?

Her entire game up to that point had been brilliant — marking and denying, finding space, applying pressure. There can be no reason to believe that remarkable pass was anything but what she intended. But little did she know. Little did any of us know what Pelayo would do next.

Tracked down the bouncing ball. Five deft touches with the right foot running at her defender. Two quick stepovers, a slight tap of the ball to create space and then …

When the ball left the right foot of Mayra Alejandra Pelayo-Bernal she knew. We all knew. It was beautiful. It was audacious. It was glorious. It held in its flight all the effort and emotion her El Tri sisters had poured out of themselves for ninety-plus minutes, all the pent up hopes of a Mexican side denied by their neighbor to the north in sixteen straight matches, all the exquisite joy of a moment in time never to be forgotten.

The ball left the right foot of Mayra Alejandra Pelayo-Bernal and flew hard and straight and true, leaving the leaping goalkeeper no chance, landing in the upper right corner of the back of the net, and, in that instant, birthing a legend.

The name is Stool, Toad Stool, but you can call me Toad. My tale is one of mortal danger, of dire straits and terrifying peril, so if you have any little ones with you, you may want to send them outside to play.

It began on a dreich September morning, but you must know a dreich September morning in Glenbrittle is nothing unusual. The orb of the rusty sun rising over Sgùrr nan Gillean was streaked with clouds, jagged swaths of gunmetal grey, the dull and gloomy light barely illumining the grey-shouldered banks of the Allt Coir’ a’ Mhadaidh. Grey stone, grey mud, grey soil, grey clouds — much of my world is grey  — but that’s why I matter, my ruby red cap unrivaled in this landscape, even standing out among the viridescent green of fern, the azure blue of harebell, the cotton candy pink of bell heather. I am a rare treasure in this glen. You must look very hard to find me, hidden as I am in a narrow crevice cleaving the face of the grey granite lip overhanging one of the coruscating emerald plunge pools they call the Fairy Pools. From the restricted vantage of my little crack, I have never glimpsed one of those elusive sprites myself, but I do not doubt that I have myself been mistaken sometimes for a fairy.

The air on that September morning hung heavy and brooding, still but unquiet, foreboding some unwelcome turn. The cascade at the head of my pool seemed to splosh, not splash, the sound of its crashing waters muffled by the leaden sky. And then, in a moment, it blew a hoolie. A furious wind surged down the glen, whipping the surface of the stream into a frenzy. The jagged clouds of gunmetal grey blew out before the roiling advance of immense thunderheads bearing rain, not gentle, plopping rain, but driving, biting rain, pockmarking the surface of the pool and stinging my leathery skin. The erstwhile quiet sky roared and the stream below me boiled with sudden urgency.

I do not know how long it rained. It may have been hours, it may have been days. The rain came down in relentless torrents, obliterating awareness of anything but itself. We have a saying here that if you don’t like the weather, give it an hour, and I must say we have come by that adage honestly. Is it warm and sunny? Just wait. In an hour, you’ll need that parka. Is it stormy and wet? Just wait. In an hour, you’ll shed that raincoat.

But not that day. That day, the rain was never-ending. It saturated time and space. It submerged memory and desire. I struggled to remember what my world was like before, and I could not begin to conceive of any world after.

The unabating rain deluged the Black Cuillins, flooding the numerous burns and streams that rush down its flanks. Carving its twisting path through Glen Brittle, the Allt Coir’ a’ Mhadaidh is fed by a dozen such tributaries. Near my perch, the burn is less than two kilometers from its confluence with the River Brittle and here achieves its maximum volume. The rains came down and the stream rose up. Minute by minute it rose, the turgid pool below me reaching levels I had never seen before. Its turbid waters swirled and foamed, now inundating the gravel bars at the edges of the pool, now inexorably creeping up the rocky scarp into which my crevice is carved, now surging into the crack itself, now churning around the base of my stem, now sloshing about my gills, now overlapping the edges of my precious cap.

And then … I can’t tell you what happened then. I could see nothing. I could hear nothing. I could feel nothing. I became nothing. All my world was dark. All my world was void. All my world was gone.

Until it wasn’t. I share my crevice home with some orange hawkweed, some marsh marigolds, and a generous sprinkling of meadow-grass. It was the meadow-grass that saved us. It was the meadow-grass that saved me. Its sprawling system of creeping rhizomes clung to the rock and anchored the soil into which my own mycelium were rooted. We emerged, the hawkweed and marigolds and me, well-watered, but in place, watching the once more familiar and no longer threatening waters of the Allt Coir’ a Mhadaidh recede.

I will never forget that day when, for a time, my fairy pool became an ogre’s torrent, and I cherish each day, dreich or sweltering, that I sit here in my cleft on the face of the grey granite lip overlooking the shimmering turquoise pool below me. I still have not seen a fairy, though I sometimes wonder, if fairies do indeed exist if they go about in the guise of meadow-grasses.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.  The gift.  The gift lovingly and impishly prepared for me by my loving and impish wife for my birthday nine years ago.    The best of gifts and the worst of gifts.

She presented me a 24×36 inch piece of light blue poster board adorned with two flaps, two six-inch squares of purple construction paper folded at the top and taped to cover whatever it was that lay on the poster board beneath.  The flaps were labeled “Door #1”and “Door #2..”  It was just like “Let’s Make a Deal.”

“You may choose one,” she said, “Door #1 or Door #2.  Open the door and what you see will be your birthday gift.  But you can only choose one door, you will only get one one gift, one and not the other.”

“Door #1, Door #1,” my grandsons, Jack and Sam, urged.  “Door #1.”  What door should I choose?  What thoughtful and wonderful gift might be revealed (because my wife’s gifts are always wonderful and thoughtful)?  But what of the door I do not choose?  What precious gift would I forfeit … forever?  Door #1 or Door #2?  As with all the very important decisions I am obliged to make, I stalled at the brink, not wanting to make the wrong choice.  Finally, I went with my grandsons.  Door #1 it is.

I lifted the flap and there it was, a most thoughtful and wonderful gift indeed.  There, beneath the paper door, glued to the poster board, was a photograph of a Caribou, a Current Designs Caribou, the kayak of my dreams, a Greenland-style sea kayak, quick and responsive and gorgeous.  I had paddled a Caribou in the Union River estuary in Ellsworth one weekday evening the summer before when Cadillac Mountain Sports was hosting a boat tryout.  I fell in love with the boat immediately and knew I wanted one … someday.  But someday had come!  I was really going to have a Caribbean-blue Caribou of my very own!

“Open the other door,” my wife said.  “See what you could have had if you had chosen the other door,” my loving and wicked wife said.  I lifted the flap of Door #2 and a lump grew in my throat and tears filled my eyes as the image beneath was revealed: the photograph of an Australian Shepherd puppy.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

That summer on our return to Maine, I picked up my Caribbean-blue Caribou at the Cadillac Mountain Sports store in Ellsworth and have paddled miles of ocean in it with great delight ever since.  But no puppy.

Until that next fall, when we drove to Hazelton, Iowa, and as I knelt on the floor of the garage at the home of Cloverfields Aussies to greet the litter of ten-week old pups, the blue merle male who would soon bear the name Toby ran to me and jumped up to eagerly lick my face.  Because my wife is most certainly the giver of thoughtful and wonderful gifts.

The latest from my Tuesday morning writers group. Our prompt this morning was: “Describe a time in your life you felt entirely free, truly yourself.”  This is what I wrote …

It was beautiful. The world was beautiful, the world that was my kayak, a paddle, the amniotic waters of Blue Hill Bay, and whatever happened to hold my gaze as I floated along the Brooklin shoreline.

I had launched that morning from Center Harbor, sliding my kayak into the water from the pebbly beach below the Brooklin Boat Yard, intending to paddle the fifteen or so miles to the South Blue Hill town wharf. I slipped past Chatto Island, paddling south and east down the Reach. My arms and torso settled into a steady rhythm, boat and body melded, a single machine, quiet and smooth and efficient.

I paddled past the Torreys, the Babsons, Hog and Harbor. It had been an hour or so, I suppose, but time and even distance mattered little. What mattered was simply being there, dipping my fingers into the cool waters, feeling the glide of the boat under my hips, delighting in the marine paradise that is Maine.

Turning north around Naskeag, making steady progress across the mouth of Herrick Bay towards Flye Point, the easy rhythm continued uninterrupted, and I marveled at how far I had come already, so quickly, so easily, and with such joy. Halfway already!

As I neared the base of Harriman Point, I celebrated the day, this wondrous and beautiful day that I had chosen for my expedition: light breeze, calm waters, smooth sailing. I had no more finished this thought, when I looked ahead to see a dark and angry and turbulent shadow rushing toward me down the bay from the north, a sailor’s cat’s paw multiplied a thousand times.

I beached on Harriman’s Point scouting the route that would take me across Blue Hill Bay to the wharf. What did I have left? Four miles, five miles? I waited for a lull, but no lull came, just more wind, relentless and furious. I thought of hiking overland, but I had no phone, no way of letting my wife know where I has landed, where to find me.

So I launched.

There was no smooth and easy rhythm now, but an all-consuming fight for survival, no steady progress, but a battle for each yard, each foot, each inch. Right blade, left blade, dig, dig, stroke, stroke, pull, pull. Soon, all too soon, arms and upper body and will were exhausted, but I dare not break this new and frenzied rhythm. If I stopped paddling even for a moment, I would lose all my precious gains or be swept back onto the point. So, dig, dig, stroke, stroke, pull, pull.

I still waited for a lull, but wind and surf only grew more intense, twenty-five knot winds and three foot waves. Right blade, left blade, dig, dig, pull, pull, never stopped, but at the same time I had to fight to remain upright, all the time imagining where and how I and my boat would be pushed by the storm if I were to capsize, and whether either of us would survive it.

Wind blew into my face and waves crashed over the bow and gunwales of my boat, drenching me in cold and salty ocean. I screamed at them. I screamed aloud into the wind and waves shouting at them to leave me alone, to let me go. Every moment, all my moments, were now the same, the ocean, my boat and me locked in eternal struggle, the sea forcing its will on me and me refusing to relent. This was my life, this is my life. I had never been so trapped, so held against my will, so threatened by irresistible powers so far far beyond my own. And I had never felt so free, so much myself …

 

Also, we have just published Eggemoggin Reach Review Volume III, an anthology of poetry and prose from members of the Deer Isle Writers’ Group. I have five poems and two essays in the anthology. The book is available through Blue Hill Books.