Landfall

Posted: November 19, 12:52 pm | (permalink) | (0 comments)

We are here! [Nautical chart of St Augustine, FL]

When I was a kid and got my textbooks on the first day of school, I’d excitedly bring them home and turn to the middle, anxious to see what was in store for me and what kinds of cool new things I’d know by the end of the year. Of course, that was never a very productive enterprise. Knowledge in so many areas builds on previous steps. So the middle of the textbook would be daunting and incomprehensible because it required things that I hadn’t learned yet. How can you do algebra if you haven’t yet mastered arithmetic? I would come away from these explorations skeptical that I would ever pass my courses that year (but I always did, obviously).

I had a flashback to that same feeling when I looked at the nautical charts for all the areas we’d have to traverse to get from Annapolis to St Augustine. I’d look at cities and harbors many days’ travel away – Norfolk and Beaufort and Charleston and Savannah – and it would seem inconceivable that we could ever get there. Just too much distance to traverse; too much could happen. But just like school, one thing built on the previous one, step by step and we did it.

Coming into port we got a hint of what the pioneers to reach the US must have felt, as we watched the spires of town, the lighthouse, and the old fort come into view and become larger and clearer. What adventures would our new (temporary) home hold for us?

[photo: making landfall in St Augustine]