The Mast
Friday, December 30th, 2005
Location: 17° 27.0′S / 81° 43.0′E
“Easy does it! … Higher!” he called down at me, pushing me to keep going. “Keep your hands on the shrouds, feet on ratlin’s! … One step at a time!” He could not contain the thrill of taking a new person aloft, and his pleasure came at my expense. Because I was petrified, his easy and supportive grin was as distressing to me as if it were a sinister smile that curled his cheeks up against his squinting dark eyes.
“Hustle it up!” he teased, “This ain’t no fat-belly, fakers ship ya know!” My pride battled my better sense to keep my feet on terra firma, “I’ll be darned if some kid is gonna taunt me on my first climb aloft.” I submerged my fears to at least the pit of my belly and took another step.
Looking aloft from on deck, my teacher and I would have appeared as two faceless bodies, backs arched against all the forces trying to hold them down to the deck as they carefully ascended into sheets of white stone. One, the younger, was seasoned with confidence and the other nearing his capacity, filled with eager innocence. Both climbers, regardless of experience share a zest for salt water, boundless horizons, and a need for a breeze dampened by God’s own sweat. The air aloft dripped heavy with His breath.
I gripped the pitched, vertical rope, looked to the heavens for another hold, heaved a weighty foot and hauled against the mass of my stubborn frame. Again. Again. Repeating the task endlessly. My ears became attuned to the shrill choir of wind bending the sail canvas into heart-shaped curves around me. A harmony played through the webbing of clews, bunts and braces. A leaf-less forest of rigging surrounded me, branching from the turf of the deck below to the towering Mainmast trunk above. This classic old ship sings her nearly hundred year old melody to every sailor who joins her.
I was scared but my teacher was not one to coddle a frightened soul, and at that moment I imagined him to be the devil and I imagined that this torturous first climb must be what hell is like. The young demon hung from the narrow shrouds above me. His voice cracked above the chorus, and his frank coolness sharply juxtaposed my anxiety and his self-assurance made me feel as small as if he were egging me on. The upper Tops’l yard hung within inches of my desperate grip. I lunged, grasped and hauled again. This time I coaxed my lanky leg higher than usual, stretching its aching, tightened muscles out onto the yard. I hugged myself tightly to the main branch of this powerful tree, my breath refusing to be caught.
Turning my head from my desperate perch I spied Lucifer sitting freehanded near the starboard end of the yard. Below, on deck, he is commonly known as John. Just John. Quiet and unpretentious. Up here in the jungle though, he changes. He looked across at me and smirked.
“Welcome to paradise!” I heard a strangely bright but cloudy voice say. I straightened myself up and looked out across the expanse of liquid turquoise, unable to discern where the ocean stopped and the heavens began.
“Wow!”
Of all the words in my vocabulary that I could have called upon to describe the grandeur, elegance, strength and beauty of the scene before me, the only utterance I could dig from my churning gut to enunciate my awe was, “Wow;” the single syllable escaped my slightly salt-chapped lips and we hung together sixty feet above the deck - the foyer to God’s own palace. To us “tree-climbing mortality mockers,” no word other than “Wow” could have described that heaven more adequately. The music, the statuesque sails, the tree-trunk mast … the vastness of blue eternity spreading before us …
“Wow!”
Then … another change. I looked again across the mast to see John gazing at the shapely wings of this ship, hidden in his own thoughts. My thoughts. Twelve thousand square feet of pressed dirty white sheets harnessed the Creator’s brute force. This silent engine propelling us to places so magical and beautiful only the Master Himself could conjure. Ceaselessly cutting us forward, the ship split the aquatic world below in two, leaving behind a small, whitewashed trail, which in turn is swallowed again by the sparkling depths of blue beneath.
I might have sat there for minutes or for hours. Time was meaningless. Maybe there is no time once a dream has been claimed. Once God’s choir has been heard for the first time through manila lines.
A minute later came the heckling of the now slightly less horrid voice again, interrupting my serenity. His eyes tightened and that sly, devilish grin reappeared. “Lets go higher!”
I felt tugged in two directions. One was to square myself to all those known ratlin’s and descend to the familiar safety of the below. The other, the more forceful tug, the one I knew I had to succumb to — urged me climb further aloft. I hated the evil temptation of scaling higher but deep down I loved John’s confident suggestion of eclipsing the Royal. Cautiously I answered by rolling off the yard and reaching skyward making headway up to the king of sails. Fear gave way to excitement, and excitement gave way to confidence. Feathers lifted my feet this time. If the Upper Tops’l was the entrance to God’s paradise, the Royal must be His living room. His towering invitation sprawled above me. This time I climbed ahead of John!
Nearing ninety feet I stalled …
“Oh crud!!?”
I stopped under the small cantilevered ladder overhanging above me. John swung round to the opposite shrouds and raised himself to my eyes. Dante’s fire sparked from his pupils. He motioned for me to keep going and with fiendish delight he squealed, “Lubbers leap!”
As a first time climber on this floating tree, I knew I had an excuse. I could have claimed small victory and turned back now. I wrestled between my thoughts and fears. How could I even entertain the idea of quitting? Not when the glory of a man meeting the pinnacle of his sailing dream lay so close at hand! At this point, any resemblance or notion of a man intentionally confining himself to his landlocked ideals of supposed safety was to be discarded immediately. I refused to quit. This was my right of passage! My baptism was to climb up, outboard and up again!
I reached up over the futtocks’ cantilevered perimeter grasping at the air until I felt the firm continuation of shrouds above. No caution remained in my spirit. I boosted my exhausted, boney soul into the full trust of the highest of the rigging. I screamed silently and with a desperate tug I kicked my heels up at this last unconquered space, swinging by my fingertips, The final, highest yard at hand … I … I … The choir stopped. Above the futtocks there are no more branches or rigging left for the wind to make an audible melody. All that was left was a quiet, moist wisp of air moving across my ears. An angel’s welcoming kiss.
Awe came over me like an overwhelming epiphany. Perhaps the greatest thing on all of earth and sea was revealed to me there — that of the reward of the struggle in gaining an entirely new point of view. Again I stood on a narrow footrope a little wider than my thumb and looked across the blue expanse, this time from the most regal of perches. The Master’s armchair. I looked down at the tiny deck creatures far below, beyond earshot. From here the ship possessed the curves of the most beautiful women, swimming effortlessly into heaven’s horizon. Not even “wow,” that captivating three-letter word, could include the freedom I felt at this moment. I stood there long enough to fill my sails with as much of God’s sweet breath as I could contain.