2022 Life Logs, Day 68: Endurance and Resolution
Date: Wednesday, March 9, 2022
Weather: Overcast with Rain and Snow Mix; High 40, Low 30 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
I have been writing The Voyage of Windbird as individual chapters that would eventually be consolidated into a book. I have, this week, been doing that consolidation. But it is not just a simple cut and paste exercise. I am doing one more quick edit of each chapter before the transfer. In doing that, I have been rereading what I wrote about Captain James Cook. I had always been a huge admirer, so as we traveled the Pacific, I knew we were often following in his wake. He first crossed the Pacific from 1768 to 1771 on the HMS Endeavor as he traveled to Australia and New Zealand. Then he returned in the HMS Resolution when he made his second and third voyages. I wrote about how excited I was when we entered Opunohu Bay in Moorea knowing the HMS Resolution with Captain Cook had been there two hundred twenty-nine years prior.
This afternoon, I finally got around to reading the NYT’s The Morning newsletter and learned that another famous Endurance, the lost vessel of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, has been found 107 years after it sunk in Antarctic waters only four miles from where it was reported to sink in 1915. Thankfully, Shackleton and his men were ‘resolute’ and had the ‘endurance’ to escape on foot and in small boats.
Then tonight I was on Zoom watching a Woods Hole Oceanographic webinar on Antarctica that I signed up for weeks ago. I learned that there are now two National Geographic sponsored tourist ships, the Resolution and the Endurance. It was a strange day of bits and pieces of history coming together, as well as the coming together of my book.
The weather was the big surprise for me today. Every night when I write this log, I check WeatherUnderground for the high and low temps of the day. While I am at it, I always check out the forecast for the next day. Either I totally misread the forecast last night, or it was totally wrong. I thought it was going to be colder than yesterday, partly sunny and less windy. I was hoping for a lovely afternoon walk without wind. This morning it was overcast, but I kept thinking that would clear in the afternoon. Imagine my surprise when I walked outside with Shadow just after noon and it was snowing!
Just in the last hour, the mix of rain and show has finally stopped. There is just a bare covering of snow on the ground, but it is white. I would like to be done with snow for this winter, but Shadow enjoyed ‘grazing’. He buries his nose in the snow and then just keeps pushing ahead, eating bits of snow as he goes.
He was having fun, but we did not have a lovely afternoon walk.
Mid-afternoon my friend Detta from New Hampshire called. While we were talking, I was looking out the window and saw some really big birds ‘grazing’ in the woods between my side yard and the water.
I squinted and looked more closely and realized the really big birds were Mallard ducks. Ducks in the woods? As I talked, they ‘grazed’ their way up the hill and into my side yard.
That has never happened since I have lived here. Between the geese that have been advancing from the front (also has not happened since I have lived here until now) and the ducks advancing from the side, Shadow and I are becoming overrun with goose and duck poop. Yuck. That is no fun at all. But maybe we can have a lovely afternoon walk tomorrow. It is forecast to be partly sunny, almost not wind, and no precipitation. We shall see what really happens.
