This is the next installment of a story begun in my June 5th posting. It is an excerpt from Ocean of Insight: A Climate Justice Memoir. Welcome aboard–H

In the inky night–dressed in long underwear, fleece, waterproof bib overalls, Wellington boots, and a rain jacket cinched at neck and wrists–I sit at the helm. Rain arrives in sheets now; the world howls. Long lines rigged to raise and lower the ship’s sails bang on the mast with the repetitive musicality of a toddler. A fat spotlight weighs heavily on my thighs and every fifteen minutes I shine its beam behind, through the tempest, to judge the boat’s distance to shore. Between glimpses, I wait. I breathe. I feel panic and search for calm. But dark makes everything ghoulish and exhaustion distorts my imagination. Winches and lines leer zombie-like and I am spooked beyond the effects of a horror film. Fifteen minutes before the end of my shift I am so unnerved I am incapable of judging if we are safe, if I am safe. So, I stop looking. I leave the beam switched off and sit with the momentary satisfaction of not knowing. Dave will arrive soon, I reason, with fresh eyes and courage to make things right.

Emerging from the companionway for his shift he asks, “How’s it going?”

“I don’t know. I stopped looking.”

The instant I hear the words tumble past my teeth, I know there is something worse than fear: voluntary ignorance. Dave—genuinely confused—doesn’t have a response. He doesn’t need one because I’ve let myself down. I gave up. How could I? I’m not a quitter. This is my boat, my life, my responsibility; if I love my life I must protect it.

Resting in bed with eyes closed and Dave on watch, I feel the ship’s untamed motion from a new vantage. I grow mindful of how my body feels when deeply frightened: steel-tight shoulders, twitchy fingers, rapid and shallow breaths, queasiness, aching temples, and a tickling, unsteady sensation in the backs of my knees. I extend gentleness and compassion toward myself and my limitations because–after all–I grew up on land in a field of safety and opportunity. I do not know how to be or what to do when I am afraid. I bring my breath into my awareness, in and out.

I have a new appreciation for people who are unwilling to acknowledge fear, sit in the company of eminent death. This is likely why so many of us refuse to take-in the truth of a warming planet. It’s terrifying. Melting permafrost, more tumultuous storms, the desiccation and blowing away of farmland, dying oceans, mass extinction—it’s overwhelming. We feel helpless as wars blossom, the population expands, nuclear bombs multiply, lawmakers behave badly, businesses newly awarded the status of personhood skim more wealth from the middle class and poor, and society’s rate of consumption—our momentary salve—continues unabated. Regardless of my optimism, I think it possible humankind will not survive the next hundred years and I find it hard to cope with this pre-apocalyptic world. Society copes by pretending nothing bad is happening. But as an individual, I feel compelled to acknowledge my fear, anger, and grief and own up to my contribution to the mess; yet I become unnerved by the thought of humanity crashing on the shore extinction. I want to stop looking. There is small comfort in ignorance, but I am newly aware voluntary ignorance is worse than fear.

The mess at hand requires from me more than the purchase of the right light bulbs or car. But other than that, it is not clear what I should do to stop the planet from overheating and safeguard species and ecosystems from extinction. I don’t know how to reinvigorate democracy and restore a sense of sanctity for the commons. I don’t know how to establish an equitable financial system and help children and families recover from the trauma of poverty (both in the United States and around the world). How do we stop violence against women and prevent the stifling of civil liberties or the diversity of voices in public dialogue; bring an end to the extraction and privatization of resources like water; and halt the militarization of civil affairs and the criminalization of minorities and homeless? How can I keep my country from building weapons of mass destruction and protecting the rights of the most dubious among us to own a cache of guns? I don’t know and not knowing hurts.

Even here in one of the most beautiful places in the world there is no escape from suffering. Scientists tell me the reef nearby–today’s destination–will be dead in fifty years. Fifteen percent of the planet’s reefs are already lifeless because of global temperature increases and another ten percent are lost because of development, over harvesting, and pollution. Twenty-five percent of all aquatic species depend on reefs for some part of their life cycle so the cascade of ruin will extend far beyond the boundaries of coral ecosystems. We can expect a dramatic rise in marine species extinction, the devastation of fishing and tourism dependent economies, and dire food shortages, starvation. They say it is too late to save coral reefs. The acidification of oceans from CO2 fallout and the planetary rise in temperature to date is already so catastrophic that scientists think viable coral reefs are a thing of the past. Their beauty will gradually fade and there is nothing we can do about it now. We know these things and yet we are not adapting, changing our strategy for the future; we remain unprepared for the myriad of outcomes linked to resource collapse.

Part of the reason I retired was to hunt for an answer to a question that haunted years of quiet mediation: how am I to live in a dying world? I tried my best to heal urban landscapes and awaken a connection to nature where people lived, worked, and played. But, my advocacy and the combined efforts of the environmental community fell short. We lose more ground each day. Making a life in wilderness sounded like a good way for me to heal, regroup, study, and learn.

Opening my eyes, I gaze through the hatch to the ship’s anchor light high atop the mast. The beacon scratches rhythmically against the stars of Orion’s belt. How is it, I wonder, that the mast doesn’t knock the belt off Orion’s hips? I smile at my own joke and imagine the hunter’s pants dropping around his ankles. Breathing in and out I am slightly soothed. My mind wanders to a story the Buddha supposedly told. A young girl ran from a pair of snarling tigers through the forest. She fled for her life but stopped short at the edge of a steep cliff. There, she climbed over the edge to dangle from the end of a broken tree branch. The tigers pursued her to the edge, paced hungrily above. In an unfortunate turn, three more tigers arrived to circle below her perch; they too were ravenous. Beside the dangling girl a single, ruby-red strawberry grew from a crack in the rock. What did she do? She ate the strawberry in full mindfulness of the safety of the present moment.

Tonight, the Buddha’s story of tigers rings of spiritual discipline and a determination to experience the richness of life in this moment while living in the company of fear. I can do better than hide or stop looking at the reality of what is. Although I am in danger, I am still completely safe and this is true about nearly every moment in my life and in the state of society at-large. We are in danger but we can have complete peace and freedom to perform magnificently with awareness of the preciousness of this moment. Dave and I are still safe. This mess can resolve even if I do not yet know how. The thing I call panic inside my gut transforms to something nameless—a sensation on the brink of confidence, a lighter pressure.

Dave bursts through the stateroom door, exclaiming “Heather, get up. We’re moving, now. The wind shifted and we’re not holding.” Above deck, Dave flashes the spotlight through the gale. Rocks leap from darkness, growling and snapping ferociously like the tigers in Buddha’s story.