Windy Boat Yard

Walking through the windy boat yard, I listened for the flap of tarp; the sound of sloppy work. On this cold autumn morning I was out to inspect the work of others, to see how mine compared. They were a bit like beached whales these Swedish boats, resting on their wooden frames on the dry land, retreating from the water as it’s winter ice advances. The variety of the boats stretched out on the field beside the water showed how much of their character the Swedes but in them in this land of a hundred thousand islands.
I was trying to compare the tarp cover work I had made over my little 6-meter sailboat with the more expert Swedes, to consider how well it might pass the winter. There was not much question, that though there were others like mine, I could easily win the contest for most blown-about tarp. It shook and buffeted like a sail being reefed into the wind.
As I looked about the other boats I suddenly spotted a tall, wooden beauty not yet covered for the winter. The wonderful color and texture of her hull drew me to her like a magnet. As I came near her I saw that her planking was of two different colors – rosewood and yellow-brown alternating down her side. The wood was full of texture and character, with delicate spots of black and long singing lines of grain. The color, gleam and fineness told you she was well cared for. I just sat for a moment and breathed her in with my eyes, becoming overwhelmed in the pit of my gut with a kind of aching.
And then I realized why I loved her. My father taught me this love. He always loved wood. He loved to work with it; he loved its variety, loved its grain, and loved its color. One summer I worked with him for weeks to stain a huge enclosed deck of redwood. It was hard to work with, but wonderful to watch under your hands. Another time Dad and I spent weeks building a yellow-pine deck behind my house overlooking a pond, and then carefully, inch by inch applied the stain. As one of his great labors of love, he built me a huge desk top of oak which we worked parquet style into a pattern like a quilt. But there was nothing he liked so much as the wood on a boat. It combined his love of sailing with his love of wood. We often walked silently through boat yards together and nothing brought out the deep smile in his eyes so much as hand-worked wood on a wind blown rig.
I felt for a moment that I was seeing through Dad’s eyes. I felt that he were alive again, or seeing through me from the undiscovered country. I thought that perhaps in the next life, when we look down we see the world through the eyes of those we loved and the eyes of those who loved us. I could see this wood because I loved my father. I loved as he loved and learned to see as he saw. So it is we see the world through those we loved, and because they are loved they can see beyond through us. And why not even after Death? For who can deny that the one thing that transcends all, the one thing that endures, as the Saint said, is Love? And that it can even shine in unliving wood.