Annapurna, 2021

In 2021, I spent six months living on Orcas Island, a small, crescent shaped isle in the San Juan archipelago. Orcas is ringed by numerous other islands–Waldron, Lopez, Shaw, and Blakely,  always offering a view of distant land and mountains that capture the imagination. To the east is Rosario Strait, to the west, Haro Strait, and southbound the Strait of Juan de Fuca will spit you out into the great Pacific. Juan de Fuca (Ἰωάννης Φωκᾶς) was a Greek sailor who in 1592 sailed on a Spanish expedition seeking the semi-mythical Strait of Anián. 

My days there revolved around the sea. I would often wake to the sound of the foghorn trumpeting across the water through my open window before the sun burned off the heavy sea mists that rolled in through the night. I marked time with the tides, no longer needing a watch to tell me what segment of the day I was in–time gained a new meaning no longer dependent on numbers. I survived mainly on the bounty that the ocean provided, eating a diet of halibut, shellfish and Dungeness crabs. Empty shells were dug into the garden bed or thrown back into the sea. 

I spent a good deal of time in a long, yellow sea-kayak that I would drag down the hill every evening after work. I found it difficult to balance such a slender boat in the waves at first, but eventually I grew to navigate the waters just fine, appreciating its speed and simplicity. I became obsessed with the water, with boats and their promise of freedom. 

Towards the end of the summer, my uncle and I went on an expedition to the North Cascades. These mountains are tall, jagged and imposing, offering us a challenging scale up the sides of our chosen peak: Mount Pugh. We had spent the trip from the island listening to the mountaineer Ed Viesturs recount his dizzying ascent of Annapurna in the Himalayas. We imagined the bold ascents of explorers from the past as we climbed and, upon summiting Pugh, I realized that in the distance was another mountain called Little Annapurna. Suddenly I felt much closer to those stories, though ours was hardly the dance with death that Viesturs had described. 

Returning to the island, I wandered the pebble-covered beaches and wondered about the similarities between sailing and mountaineering. Both activities call one into the great unknown, into the limits of the depths and heights of our world. Both involve a level of risk that, prepared as one might be, can lead to death in the blink of an eye. At the same time, both of these pastimes offer a level of freedom that is rare in the modern world. 

With these thoughts in mind, I found a piece of driftwood that had washed up on the rocks. I took it home and began to carve, cutting it down into the shape of a ship. I knew nothing about model shipbuilding, but I had seen photos of gaff-rigged cutters before and knew that I wanted to make one. After much hacking, sawing, sanding, steaming, bending, gluing and painting; I ended up with a little ship that somewhere, in the depths of my imagination, cuts through the emerald waves in that far-away strait where the mountains meet the sea.

Annapurna, 2021 (Driftwood, dowel, denim, string, button, acrylic)