On The Beach

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Ah, yes. Before I contacted Fong, I was prone to think in terms of super effort. Now I go with the flow. It was possible-if one was quiet enough and relaxed enough-to project one's awareness clear out of the body. It was said of the Taoist hermits that they could fly like dragons. Fong, who really existed (he was described by Rowena Farre in The Beckoning Land), was a master of flying. One flew in the subtle body by perfectly balancing on the back of the bird of time. The bird of time has two wings called past and future. But between the two wings is a spot on which the sage can balance. He flies in the subtle body on the back of the bird of time.

Balance, balance. Ascending out of the body I rose on the bird of time above the Californian shore. Reflected light, bouncing off the moon, illuminated the earth. On such trips I became aware of my body lying there by the beach, a speck no bigger than a grain of sand. Sometimes the bird of time journeyed so far that I wondered if I would be able to return. What would happen to my speck of a body without the "I am"? But there was a thread like the string of a kite between me and the body, and always it wound me back. My body slept. The planet rolled. In the east the sky began to lighten.

I ate breakfast in a blend of dawn and moonlight, dismantled my tent, and took it back to the car. Lifting my kayak over my shoulder, I carried it to the ocean. It was a new kayak, shorter and lighter than my old one, quite a different design . . . more like a decked canoe. It had a watertight compartment for my gear and a keel to help it track. The old kayak was flat-bottomed as a scow and waddled like a duck. I had made the new kayak myself and named it Small Porgy.

I arranged my gear in the forward compartment and bolted the bulkhead in place. Dragging Small Porgy down the beach, I lined it up to face the surf. The surf was always high at Russian Gulch. It was a lot easier to go out from Fort Ross . . . but a new breed of bureaucrats had taken charge of the park and made it practically impossible for a fisherman to get down to the beach. I had grown tired of pleading and arguing with them. Better face the surf than the bureaucrats.

So. One lined up one's boat and waited for the right moment. A tricky business. The moment of truth. Experience had taught me one thing. Once you launched you had to go on. No hesitating, no turning back. That was disastrous. You would be rolled by the breakers and lose equipment.

So I launched, plunged on, and was hit by a breaker. Poor timing. Small Porgy took on gallons of water. But my new design allowed for that: Fore and aft Small Porgy was filled with urethane foam. A floating souffle. She stayed afloat even when full of water.

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