The Narrative Image

My brother Fred, Lance the authentic outdoorsman, Eric (expert at interpreting Boston accents), and I stood in the sand at the edge of Netarts Bay. Across the bay, the Netarts peninsula gleamed enticingly through the cool, hazy exhalation of the ocean. We had heard that the peninsula (a spit really) was a promised land of clams and crabs and we all carried shell fish licenses, shovels, rakes and collectively, a crab pot. Standing on the shore, we could feel the ocean in the act of respiration, breathing in and out with great twelve hour breaths. It had been breathing in all morning, filling its great watery lung to capacity, and now at last the ebbing tide slackened, was quiet and still, and began changing direction. We set out into the rising tide having deduced a statistically improved chance of not being swept out to sea by doing so. Well…we almost all set out. The inflatable raft which was meant to carry supplies that wouldn’t ordinarily fit into a kayak turned out to have a ...

When I compare myself to Monkey-cam, the most striking difference I notice is that I seldom leave the house without pants. But the second most striking difference is a relative absence of bodily monkey-fur. One line of thought suggests that in evolutionary terms, when we moved from sheltered forests to exposed African savannahs, we may have lost our fur as an adaptation to aid in heat regulation But another line of thought entertains the notion that we very nearly returned to the sea like our mammal brethren – whales and dolphins – during some kind of aquatic ape stage. This would explain also why we cry salty tears and have a mostly dormant diving reflex – and also why I resemble Shamu when I try on wetsuits. Maybe it also explains why the ocean is such a big vacation destination. Maybe in a way, going to the ocean is like going home. Perhaps ancestral memories stir in the corridors of our subconscious and whisper of fantastic seafood smorgasbords... ... a magical place where we c...