to be or not to be unplugged

a small thought:

when i'm on vacation i generally like to remain unplugged and get totally away from the computer. i prefer to look through a window screen, not at a computer screen. for me, the idea is to block distractions, open up my mind, and allow new stimulation to grab my senses, so that when i do get back online i can—i hope i can, anyway—write from a fresh perspective.

but in january hannah brought a computer with her on our family vacation and i confess, i cheated.

i logged on.

but guess what? i found i only needed a little fix.

honestly, i felt better when i was logged off.

and guess what? the world kept spinning around, and i didn't miss anything of actual importance during the time i had been unplugged.

go fish

while my family and i were on vacation on sanibel island earlier in january, we spent a day fishing in the coves and inlets around the ding darling wildlife refuge. we hired a local guy recommended to us for fishing expeditions to take us out on his boat and provide fishing rods, bait, and his knowledge of where the fish might be biting.

with the exception of kevin, not one of us is a die-hard fisherman. by die-hard i mean a person who gets all excited about baiting a hook with slimy shrimp and casting for hours on end with very few nibbles. honestly, we can hardly call ourselves fishermen at all. but we really enjoy being out on the ocean, cruising and checking out the sights on a warm, sunny day.

the weather was perfect; the fishing was not. four (out of six) people cast their lines repeatedly for five hours and only one person—my lucky husband—caught anything. he reeled in four fish—two 17-inch spotted sea trout and two redfish.

not many fish in the sea near us, but plenty of brown and white pelicans circled on the air currents above out heads and did take-offs and landings in the sanibel bayou wetlands. they, too, were looking for fish; they, too, moved on when they didn't spot any.

on our way back toward the sanibel causeway, the ocean in front of us filled up with breaching bottlenose dolphins. dorsal fins were everywhere. clarence, our captain, noted that a few of the dolphins were rolling on their sides near the surface of the water. that's a female breeding behavior. (dolphin love occurs all year but can peak in the spring.) and then, after entertaining us for ten minutes, they were gone.

and so were we. back on dry land again we were ready for a late lunch and a few beers.

island syllables

a few words spoken, or unspoken—but always in my head—during the lazy winter vacation days on sanibel. i'm in maine again, but recalling these simple syllables will keep me warm for a long time:

barefoot       lazy

waves          sunrise

iced tea        oysters

hibiscus         beer

sunset          SPF

crabs            sand

towel           waves

starfish         breezy

salty             iced water

pelicans       palm trees

waves          dolphins

swimming    tide

fish              calamari
reading         fishing 

seashells      waves

barbecue      laughter

herons          ibis

green            blue

sighs             happy

sunshine       waves

surf               walking

tide pools      sweatshirt

family           together
flip-flops     ocean     

pretty denmark

you put on a sweater and grab a beer. you stretch out and look up and notice that the sails, listless a minute ago, are filling with wind, are beginning to dance and play in the air. the journey to juelsminde started with fog and ghostly vessels appearing suddenly in the murk as if out of nowhere, and will end with bright clarity and sun, breezes and a sparkling sea.

you arrive at your destination. the marina is alive with activity as the captain, assisted by his attractive and athletic wife, maneuvers the sailboat neatly into her slip. you help clean up the lunch dishes, pull off your sweater and get ready to haul yourself and your bags off the boat and into the car.

on the drive you are given a tour of the small, picturesque harbor town of juelsminde. it is very clean, very orderly, filled with cafes and shops. the neighborhoods are quaint, comfortable, the gardens well-tended and filled with color. you could live here in pretty denmark.

at grethe's house you walk around the garden with her and then relax on the terrace with a cup of tea and a piece of marzipan. her husband tells you the story of the "eel field" behind the house as you sit and watch the birds in the bird feeders. there are an awful lot of danish birds indulging in a raucous chorus of birdsong out in the backyard. the birds are much noisier than at home. is that possible?

you laugh about the wine box dispenser attached to the house next to the terrace and it reminds you of the story knud told about how he and some friends used a sailboat to smuggle booze out of germany via the sea. they poured hard liquor into empty wine boxes to avoid the extremely high taxes that existed in denmark before the formation of the european union.

soon it is time to go. you say thanks for the great time you had on the s/s mary, and you and grethe give each other a big hug. hellos are so much better than good-byes......

sailing to bogense

we were horribly late because we ended up getting stuck in rush hour traffic around copenhagen. but our danish hosts, grethe and knud, who had invited us to sail up the lille baelt (little sound) with them and spend the night in bogense before heading to juelsminde, were gracious and unconcerned about our tardy arrival and the fact that we wouldn't get to bogense until around 9:30 that night. of course, at this time of year, it doesn't really ever get totally dark in scandinavia so night time cruises are, in fact, perpetual twilight cruises.

due to a complete lack of wind, our evening sail turned into a motoring expedition. curious dolphins and seals popped up near the boat. the sky formed a monochromatic backdrop for us, a smooth sheet of deep gray dipping into the sea and blocking out the horizon line, a scene in which we floated by a flat, solid gray canvas world surrounding our watery stage on all sides.

instead of the busy bogense marina, we tied up alongside the actual village of bogense which jutted out on two narrow slices of peninsula on both sides of the canal-like inlet where our hosts would spend the night on their boat. it was so nice to turn off the motor and hear the water lapping against the side of the 38-foot s/s mary. there were only a few other boats tied up opposite ours and except for a small party at one restaurant, no people were to be seen.

the lovely little danish village consisted of a mixture of newer and older small, two-story buildings, the newer ones in a style i call danish modern, oftentimes with dramatic roofline angles, a sea of long windows and, of course, my favorite red-tiled european roofs. running down the middle of each thin strip of land was a row of houses with grass all around and a sliver of a road on one side. that's all. definitely my cup of tea.

{strib lighthouse enroute to bogense}

knud told us that in order to live in the village a business must occupy the first floor of your house. i was surprised by this since bogense looked very much like a sleepy little hamlet of private homes when, in fact, each ground floor held a shop, restaurant, tiny hotel, or bed and breakfast. (we stayed at friendly lund's, where our room faced seaward and we could open the door, walk across the grass and go for a dip in the ocean, had the weather been warmer.)

i realized they maintained the cozy feeling of the place by displaying only small, unobtrusive signs on the buildings (indeed so small that i didn't even notice them at first). and of course this was a neighborhood filled with families going about their daily routines. in addition, the one road on each side was narrow and the parking areas were really just extensions of driveways, very small by american standards; obviously most of the traffic in bogense was by boat.

in the morning we set sail for juelsminde.

blue

surrounded by blue. blue sky, blue sea, blue swimming pool.

another nice thing about sanibel island in january was that you didn't have to fight your way past gazillions of bodies to get to the one available lounge chair by the pool. this was the big pool, the one where all the action took place. the hot tub was a few steps away, and there was music, a volleyball net, a fully stocked bar and you could order lunch and be served poolside.

the pool next to our building was the quiet pool. i liked that one best. even fewer people here than at the other pool. you were closer to the ocean. it was smaller and it didn't have music, a bar or food. on the lawn outside the pool area there were lounge chairs positioned just above the beach. you could hear the rumbling surf. nice....

a side note: hardly anyone just sat on the beach. far more people were strolling, walking, shelling, and jogging. very fit and energetic beach goers indeed.

~ happy, happy birthday to mom (memi) today. ~