Africa | tugster: a waterblog

Years ago I did “headwaters 1, 2, and 3.”

Everyone likely in the US knows the Thomas Tusser line saying that April showers do spring May Flowers.” Maybe someone’s already written about January cold spawning February plans, and then when March comes along, well . . . march means MOVE. Maybe someone has a more eloquent, more Tusseresque way of expressing this.

In my case, I bought a USA Rail Pass and activated it yesterday, am doing right now what I did decades ago with a Eurail Pass. Maybe some of you have done one pass or the other as well. For me, this March is mostly rail and then rental car to see places I’ve long wanted to see.

Now as I’m into my 72 lap of the sun, I’m wondering how I got where I am, how I became this person resulting from all the lefts and rights I’ve made at all the forks in the roads and intersections. This is what I’m exploring this month: headwaters posts looking back and rail photos looking and moving forward. Yes, there’ll be as many boats in these posts as I notice and can get photos of. If you don’t fancy personal reflection, sorry.

When I was 18, I was in college as a pre-med student. I loved the idea of being a doctor–others praised me for it too. But what did I or they know about that occupation? In my case, nothing. Long, painstaking bio and chem labs told me clearly that medical science was not my path. So I became an English major, not knowing where it’d lead, but I enjoyed my humanities classmates more than my science ones. Boats? The only ones I’d ever been in were canoes. I still love canoes, and I have done my share of messing around in them. Cameras? Digital was the thing only of sci-fi.

In my last year in college, I sent out two applications: one to the US Navy and one to the US Peace Corps. USN never contacted me, but USPC did, and after many application materials and tasks, invited me to train to go to Zaire. Honestly, I had to look up where that was, since the name change from Democratic Republic of the Congo had only just been made. Over a beer or two, I’ll tell you how myself and fellow trainees got detained for two days in Uganda, our first stop in Africa, and accused of being mercenaries, not an illogical accusation given what was happening in the waning days of colonialism in Southern Africa and the fact that two-thirds of our group was male, under 25, and bearers of new passports, but I digress. I had an Instamatic and one roll of film with me, and I witnessed that Idi Amin had the same camera because I saw him take a photo of our group with one he pulled out of his jacket pocket.

A year ago, I did three long posts on my Congo River experiences in 1973, half a century ago now. You can read all that here. One day in 1974, this hospital ship–Mama Yemo--came up the Lulonga, the Congo River tributary passing the clearing where I worked. Locals came knocking on my door, saying “your sister is here.” This was plausible given that all my sisters were nurses, and in those days, news traveled slowly by letter. It turns out “my sister” was a Canadian nurse, and she invited me on board for a tour of the facilities.

Obviously, no AIS existed back then, nor did the internet or cell service. My eyes, touring the ship, must have seen a much different set of details than would have caught my eye today. For example, the nurse and I lingered in the operating room suites but not the bridge; we toured the pharmacy but not the engine room. As I said, I was a different person back then.

A decade and a half later, in 1989, I had some identity as a professional, but I lived here, the last house–a camp really– on a dead end road in New Hampshire. It was a hideout. No, I was not doing criminal acts or being a fugitive from the law. Everything was above board, I had a full-time job, but a) the woods and the river nearby was idyllic, and b) life was truly idyllic there, either canoeing, kayaking, hiking, and I was feeling in love.

This was my constellation of boats at the time; I owned a canoe and the kayak, but not lobster boat Bonnie Lou, for whom I lusted.

Of course, I’m leaving a lot out, but when my job near the NH border ended, I got a job in NYS, where I was appalled by the cost of housing. My solution was to buy an old wooden cabin cruiser, hire someone to do some preliminary work on it, and then live on it for a year in a tidal creek in SW Long Island outside the outer boros. The cabin cruiser–a 1965 Owens sort of like this–was cozy shelter for myself and a new love, ran on two thirsty gasoline engines, and never sank, but it took my a short time to realize that I would never restore it to the degree I imagined . . . to Bristol fashion; I sold the Owens and the dream to someone else, bought a fiberglass boat, and spent more time living on that tidal creek. One thing I learned is that wooden boats are much warmer in a northern winter than metal or fiberglass ones.

I owned a small weatherproof camera at the time, good when I hiked. I have a print of the Owens, as we called it, but I can’t find that 3.5 x 5″ glossy. Digital photography was still fairly new and I thought it’d be a fad. No tugboats ever came through this tidal creek, and if one had, I’d be too busy sanding or painting to pay much attention.