Pacific NW

Expeditions

Neptune and I awoke to a horrible sight. Some time during the night, Modulus had completely filled to the gunwales with rainwater and flipped over. She was floating hull-up at the end of her line. Worse yet, we had left the oars in her! Immediately we donned our foul weather gear and I began to think of ways to improvise a pair of oars. Amazingly, when we flipped Modulus back over, they were still under the boat!! And even more incredible was the loose spare oarlock, still in the boat. The rain came down in buckets last night and all day today. I set my cup out in the cockpit and periodically went out to have a full glass of rainwater. Several waterfalls in the basin tripled and quadrupled in size, the sound of their roar increasing all day. We sat by the woodstove , read, and cooked popcorn. In the evening the weather broke for 2 hours and I went off for a hike on shore. The land here is amazing. All around it is open, broken forest and tundra with wild-looking tube mosses. You can walk for miles and miles in any direction without bushwacking. There were thousands of small lakes and tarns that reflected the high mountain peaks beyond. Bear trails criss-crossed the tundra everywhere and I came across countless fresh scat piles, good reminders about where my place is in the food chain out here! All of my five senses were greatly heightened by the need to be aware, and I greatly enjoyed the hike. It feels good to move around and work up a sweat after sitting for so long on the boat, too.