Land Ho!
Dear Sam,
Seeing land for the first time is like getting out of a car after a long day of road-tripping, after you’ve just spent hours stewing in the uncomfortable car humidity that is one part greasy fast-food and two parts stale human, and everyone’s a little sick of playing “fun road games”, and your legs have alternated falling asleep at least three times because you’ve been sandwiched between the window and a teetering pile of bags, coolers, and maybe beach umbrellas.
After a successful week of taking pictures of scallops and fish and the sea floor, Leg 1 of the Scallop Assessment has finished and we’ve returned to the port-town of Lewes, Delaware. It’s a little odd to call this a return considering I have spent almost no time here, but hey — land is land is land, and no matter how often I may introduce myself on dating profiles as an ocean man, and believe me it is often, I am certain now that I am deeply and loyally a man of land. I noticed today for the first time how reassuring it is to put your feet down on unmoving ground, to know that beneath you is the entire solid mass of earth and it’s not going anywhere. Maybe one day I’ll find some sort of middle ground in between land and ocean, with all the majesty of the expansive ocean and all the ground of the ground.
Yesterday we offloaded the ship, said goodbye to most of the crew and science party (a new group is coming to replace them in two days), cleaned up, wrote work emails, and I did the thing I’m supposed to do with the data. We spent most of the day on the ship so it wasn’t particularly exciting. Today was the real wild and crazy shore day I’d been waiting for all week — a day full of debaucherous activities that I wasn’t able to do while on the ship. This includes — and is limited to — going for a nice long run (longer than the length of the ship), buying some food at a shop, laying down in the grass, and interacting with people who don’t live with me in an extremely intimate setting
Encountering new people is what I missed most. Even if the interaction is for a brief moment as you pass them on the sidewalk, it’s a relief to see an unfamiliar face. The people I worked with on the ship are some of my favorite people around, and they all deserve to have a photographer/journalist take their picture and write a blurb about them in the “humans of New York” style and share it with the world (don’t we all?) but I am tired of their faces as I’m sure they are tired of mine. It’s human fatigue, AND IT’S PERFECTLY NATURAL, and I have it after a week so I have no idea how submarine workers, or subterranean lizard people, or those astronauts-in-training who live on the tops of volcanoes for years to simulate living on Mars are able to do it.
We head back out the day after tomorrow and the next time I will see land will be in two weeks when we pull into my home port, Woods Hole, Massachusetts. In preparation for returning to sea, my to-do list today is as follows:
1. Lay back down in the grass
2. Fill my pockets with land-souvenirs like dirt and pebbles and street litter
3. Look at as many strange faces as I can
4. Pet an animal (ideally dog, will settle for cat or friendly pig on a leash)
5. Download the internet onto a USB stick
Love,
Mike
