[Paddlewise] Trip Report: Surfing the Harvest Moon

>To: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net
>From: John Somers <somers_at_utmbrt.utmb.edu>
>Subject: Surfing the Harvest Moon
>
>Twilight on the Gulf, we take our short kayaks to the beach.
>We're on the water, nose through the breakers and beyond before moonrise.
>
>We paddle east, past the palms with, what? Christmas lights?  Yes, looks
like the big hotel is lighting up its front driveway with palmlites.  Up
the beach, past neon and argon, mercury and whatever other lamps attempt to
light up the coastal darkness.  They all fade from view as we move further
out.
>Now there's a small, deep-red spot of light appearing above the horizon to
the southeast.  A far richer glow than any of the seawall lights, the
rising harvest moon makes its way through and behind the spidering clouds,
always glowing, simmering through, large and red. 
>It emerges, half a sphere, awesomely beautiful.  No wonder the Karankawas
wept with the setting of the sun and danced to greet its rising.  They were
directly connected.  Did they also dance to see the full moon rise?
>
>Flocks of black skimmers appear, veering to and fro, surfing the light
waves from that moon.  One group heads straight toward my boat, veers
upward to clear the swinging arc of my blade, then back down close to the
water, still cutting back and forth.  They fly by celestial light, immune
to the bonds of thinking, conceptualizing, knowledge, just being.
>
>Somewhere far to the east are the Keys.  The water rolls in hills and
valleys, connecting us with there and beyond, with the Atlantic, with other
seas, and, through vast evapo/condensing cycles of nature, with the rain,
fog and snowcaps that feed streams everywhere to rivers, to seas and back
again.  With the Tsangpo and its recent victim, with the floods of Central
America and of central Texas, and even, most definitely, with the past and
the future.
>It's quiet out here, and the water connects us all, highlighted by the
moonlight glancing off each ripple and swell.
>
>The moon rises higher, fully spherical, still deep orange and large.  Now
the perfect circle in the sky, not mathematically, but visibly, and casts
its golden trail across the water.  If this is not real, then nothing is.
>
>As it turns from orange to gold, we spin on the water and begin to make
our way back, tacking across the swells, surfing and tacking, sometimes
turning back to see the moonlight paling to yellow and illuminating more
and more of the sea.
>We surf the water and the light; I recognize again that I am seeking, not
yet enlightened, only partially illuminated.
>
>Stick a couple of rolls, make our way back in through the surf, then low
brace the last easy ones into the beach.
>
>Says the fair-haired lady with the alabaster skin, hazel eyes gleaming,
>	"Gulf coast days may be steamy, but ohhh....these Somers nights!"

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