Read The Log from the Sea of Cortez Online
Authors: John Steinbeck,Richard Astro
The Log from the Sea of Cortez (36 page)
It seems to be this way in a time of danger. A little chill of terror runs up the spine and a kind of nausea comes into the throat. And then that disappears into a kind of dull “what the hell” feeling. Perhaps this is the working of some mind-to-gland-to-body process. Perhaps some shock therapy takes control. But our fear was past now, and we braced ourselves to steady the boat against the impact of the expected wind. And at that moment the bow of the skiff grounded gently, for it was not wind at all that hissed, but little waves washing strongly over an exposed sand-bar. We climbed out, hauled the boat up, and sat for a moment on the beach. We had been badly frightened, there is no doubt of it. Even the sleepy dullness which follows the adrenal drunkenness was there. And while we sat there, the fog lifted, and in the morning light we could see the
Western Flyer
at anchor offshore, and we had landed only about a quarter of a mile from where we had intended. The sun broke clear now, and true to form when there was neither danger nor much work the Sea-Cow started easily and we rounded the sand-hill entrance of the big estuary. Now that the sun was up, we could see why there were dotted lines on the maps to indicate the borders of the
estero.
It was endless—there were no borders. The mirage shook the horizon and draped it with haze, distorted shapes, twisted mountains, and made even the bushes seem to hang in the air. Until every foot of such a shore is covered and measured, the shape and extent of these estuaries will not be known.
Western Flyer
at anchor offshore, and we had landed only about a quarter of a mile from where we had intended. The sun broke clear now, and true to form when there was neither danger nor much work the Sea-Cow started easily and we rounded the sand-hill entrance of the big estuary. Now that the sun was up, we could see why there were dotted lines on the maps to indicate the borders of the
estero.
It was endless—there were no borders. The mirage shook the horizon and draped it with haze, distorted shapes, twisted mountains, and made even the bushes seem to hang in the air. Until every foot of such a shore is covered and measured, the shape and extent of these estuaries will not be known.
Inside the entrance of the estuary a big canoe was anchored and four Indians were coming ashore from the night’s fishing. They were sullen and unsmiling, and they grunted when we spoke to them. In their boat they had great thick mullet-like fish, so large that it took two men to carry each fish. They must have weighed sixty to one hundred pounds each. These Indians carried the fish through an opening in the brush to a camp of which we could see only the smoke rising, and they were definitely unfriendly. It was the first experience of this kind we had had in the Gulf. It wasn’t that they didn’t like
us
—they didn’t seem to like each other.
us
—they didn’t seem to like each other.
The tide was going down in the estuary, making a boiling current in the entrance. Biologically, the area seemed fairly sterile. There were numbers of small animals, several species of large snails and a number of small ones. There were burrowing anemones
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with transparent, almost colorless tentacles spread out on the sand bottom. And there were the flower-like
Cerianthus
in sand-tubes everywhere. On the bottom were millions of minute sand dollars of a new type, brilliant light green and having holes and fairly elongate spines. Farther inside the estuary we took a number of small heart-urchins and a very few larger ones. On the sand bottoms there were large burrows, but dig as we would, we could never find the owners. They were either very quick or very deep, but even under water their burrows were always open and piles of debris lay about the entrances. Some large crustacean, we thought, possibly of the fiddler crab clan.
79
with transparent, almost colorless tentacles spread out on the sand bottom. And there were the flower-like
Cerianthus
in sand-tubes everywhere. On the bottom were millions of minute sand dollars of a new type, brilliant light green and having holes and fairly elongate spines. Farther inside the estuary we took a number of small heart-urchins and a very few larger ones. On the sand bottoms there were large burrows, but dig as we would, we could never find the owners. They were either very quick or very deep, but even under water their burrows were always open and piles of debris lay about the entrances. Some large crustacean, we thought, possibly of the fiddler crab clan.
The commonest animal of all was the enteropneust, an “acorn-tongued” worm presumably about three feet long that we had found at San Lucas Cove and at Angeles Bay. There were hundreds of their sand-castings lying about. We were not convinced that with all our digging we had got the whole animal even once (and the specialist subsequently confirmed our opinion with regret!).
Deep in the estuary we took several large beautifully striped
Tivela-like
clams and a great number of flat pearly clams. There were hundreds of large hermit crabs in various large gastropod shells. We found a single long-armed sand-burrowing brittle-star which turned out to be
Ophiophragmus marginatus,
and our listing of it is the only report on record since Lütken, in Denmark, erected the species from Nicaraguan material nearly a hundred years ago. In the uneasy footing of the sand, every stick and large shell and rock was encrusted with barnacles; even one giant swimming crab carried a load of barnacles on his back.
Tivela-like
clams and a great number of flat pearly clams. There were hundreds of large hermit crabs in various large gastropod shells. We found a single long-armed sand-burrowing brittle-star which turned out to be
Ophiophragmus marginatus,
and our listing of it is the only report on record since Lütken, in Denmark, erected the species from Nicaraguan material nearly a hundred years ago. In the uneasy footing of the sand, every stick and large shell and rock was encrusted with barnacles; even one giant swimming crab carried a load of barnacles on his back.
The wind had been rising a little as we collected, rippling the water. We cruised about in the shallows trying to see the bottom. There were great numbers of sand sharks darting about, but the bottom was clean and sterile and not at all as well populated as we would have supposed. The mirage grew more and more crazy. Perhaps these sullen Indians were bewildered in such an uncertain world where nothing half a mile away could maintain its shape or size, where the world floated and trembled and flowed in dream forms. And perhaps the reverse is true. Maybe these Indians dream of a hard sharp dependable world as an opposite of their daily vision.
We had not taken riches in this place. When the tide turned we started back for the
Western Flyer.
Perhaps the Sea-Cow too had been frightened that morning, for it ran steadily. But the tide was so strong that we had to help it with the oars or it would not have been able to hold its own against the current. It took two hours of oars and motor to get back to the
Western Flyer.
Western Flyer.
Perhaps the Sea-Cow too had been frightened that morning, for it ran steadily. But the tide was so strong that we had to help it with the oars or it would not have been able to hold its own against the current. It took two hours of oars and motor to get back to the
Western Flyer.
We felt that this had not been a good nor a friendly place. Some quality of evil hung over it and infected us. We were not at all sorry to leave it. Everyone on board was quiet and uneasy until we pulled up the anchor and started south for Agiabampo, which was, we thought, to be our last collecting station.
It was curious about this Estero de la Luna. It had been a bad place—bad feelings, bad dreams, and little accidents. The look and feel of it were bad. It would be interesting to know whether others have found it so. We have thought how places are able to evoke moods, how color and line in a picture may capture and warp us to a pattern the painter intended. If to color and line in accidental juxtaposition there should be added odor and temperature and all these in some jangling relationship, then we might catch from this accident the unease we felt in the
estero.
There is a stretch of coast country below Monterey which affects all sensitive people profoundly, and if they try to describe their feeling they almost invariably do so in musical terms, in the language of symphonic music. And perhaps here the mind and the nerves are true indices of the reality neither segregated nor understood on an intellectual level. Boodin remarks the essential nobility of philosophy and how it has fallen into disrepute. “Somehow,” he says, “the laws of thought must be the laws of things if we are going to attempt a science of reality. Thought and things are part of one evolving matrix, and cannot ultimately conflict.”
80
estero.
There is a stretch of coast country below Monterey which affects all sensitive people profoundly, and if they try to describe their feeling they almost invariably do so in musical terms, in the language of symphonic music. And perhaps here the mind and the nerves are true indices of the reality neither segregated nor understood on an intellectual level. Boodin remarks the essential nobility of philosophy and how it has fallen into disrepute. “Somehow,” he says, “the laws of thought must be the laws of things if we are going to attempt a science of reality. Thought and things are part of one evolving matrix, and cannot ultimately conflict.”
80
And in a unified-field hypothesis, or in life, which is a unified field of reality, everything is an index of everything else. And the truth of mind and the way mind is must be an index of things, the way things are, however much one may stand against the other as an index of the second or irregular order, rather than as a harmonic or first-order index. These two types of indices may be compared to the two types of waves, for indices are symbols as primitive as waves. The first wave-type is the regular or cosine wave, such as tide or undulations of light or sound or other energy, especially where the output is steady and unmixed. These waves may be progressive—increasing or diminishing—or they can seem to be stationary, although deeply some change or progression may be found in all oscillation. All terms of a series must be influenced by the torsion of the first term and by the torsion of the end, or change, or stoppage of the series. Such waves as these may be predictable as the tide is. The second type, the irregular for the while, such as graphs of rainfall in a given region, falls into means which are the functions of the length of time during which observations have been made. These are unpredictable individually; that is, one cannot say that it will rain or not rain tomorrow, but in ten years one can predict a certain amount of rainfall and the season of it. And to this secondary type mind might be close by hinge and “key-in” indices.
We had had many discussions at the galley table and there had been many honest attempts to understand each other’s thinking. There are several kinds of reception possible. There is the mind which lies in wait with traps for flaws, so set that it may miss, through not grasping it, a soundness. There is a second which is not reception at all, but blind flight because of laziness, or because some pattern is disturbed by the processes of the discussion. The best reception of all is that which is easy and relaxed, which says in effect, “Let me absorb this thing. Let me try to understand it without private barriers. When I have understood what you are saying, only then will I subject it to my own scrutiny and my own criticism.” This is the finest of all critical approaches and the rarest.
The smallest and meanest of all is that which, being frightened or outraged by thinking outside or beyond its pattern, revenges itself senselessly; leaps on a misspelled word or a mispronunciation, drags tricky definition in by the scruff of the neck, and, ranging like a small unpleasant dog, rags and tears the structure to shreds. We have known a critic to base a vicious criticism on a misplaced letter in a word, when actually he was venting rage on an idea he hated. These are the suspicious ones, the self-protective ones, living lives of difficult defense, insuring themselves against folly with folly—stubbornly self-protective at too high a cost.
Ideas are not dangerous unless they find seeding place in some earth more profound than the mind. Leaders and would-be leaders are so afraid that the
idea
“communism” or the
idea
“Fascism” may lead to revolt, when actually they are ineffective without the black earth of discontent to grow in. The strike-raddled business-man may lean toward strikeless Fascism, forgetting that it also eliminates him. The rebel may yearn violently for the freedom from capitalist domination expected in a workers’ state, and ignore the fact that such a state is free from rebels. In each case the idea is dangerous only when planted in unease and disquietude. But being so planted, growing in such earth, it ceases to be idea and becomes emotion and then religion. Then, as in most things teleologically approached, the wrong end of the animal is attacked. Lucretius, striking at the teleology of his time, was not so far from us. “I shall untangle by what power the steersman nature guides the sun’s courses, and the meanderings of the moon, lest we, percase, should fancy that of own free will they circle their perennial courses round, timing their motions for increase of crops and living creatures, or lest we should think they roll along by any plan of gods. For even those men who have learned full well that godheads lead a long life free of care, if yet meanwhile they wonder by what plans things can go on (and chiefly yon high things observed o’erhead on the ethereal coasts), again are hurried back unto the fears of old religion and adopt again harsh masters, deemed almighty,—wretched men, unwitting what can be and what cannot, and by what law to each its scope prescribed, its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.”
81
idea
“communism” or the
idea
“Fascism” may lead to revolt, when actually they are ineffective without the black earth of discontent to grow in. The strike-raddled business-man may lean toward strikeless Fascism, forgetting that it also eliminates him. The rebel may yearn violently for the freedom from capitalist domination expected in a workers’ state, and ignore the fact that such a state is free from rebels. In each case the idea is dangerous only when planted in unease and disquietude. But being so planted, growing in such earth, it ceases to be idea and becomes emotion and then religion. Then, as in most things teleologically approached, the wrong end of the animal is attacked. Lucretius, striking at the teleology of his time, was not so far from us. “I shall untangle by what power the steersman nature guides the sun’s courses, and the meanderings of the moon, lest we, percase, should fancy that of own free will they circle their perennial courses round, timing their motions for increase of crops and living creatures, or lest we should think they roll along by any plan of gods. For even those men who have learned full well that godheads lead a long life free of care, if yet meanwhile they wonder by what plans things can go on (and chiefly yon high things observed o’erhead on the ethereal coasts), again are hurried back unto the fears of old religion and adopt again harsh masters, deemed almighty,—wretched men, unwitting what can be and what cannot, and by what law to each its scope prescribed, its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.”
81
In the afternoon we sailed down the coast carefully, for the sand-bars were many and some of them uncharted. It was a shallow sea again, and the blueness of deep water had changed to the gray-greenof sand and shallows. Again we saw manta rays, but not on the surface this day, and the hunt had gone out of us. Tex did not even get out his new harpoon. Perhaps the crew were homesick now. They had seen Guaymas, they were bloated with stories, and they wanted to get back to Monterey to tell them. We would stop at no more towns, see no more people. The inland water of Agiabampo was our last stop, and then quickly home. The shore was low and hot and humid, covered with brush and mangroves. The sea was sterile, or populated with sharks and rays. No algae adhered to the sand bottom, and we were sad in this place after the booming life of the other side. We sailed all afternoon and it was evening when we came to anchorage five miles offshore in the safety of deeper water. We would edge in with the leadline in the morning.
28
APRIL 11
At ten o‘clock we moved toward the northern side of the entrance of Agiabampo estuary. The sand-bars were already beginning to show with the lowering tide. Tiny used the leadline on the bow while Sparky was again on the crow’s-nest where he could watch for the shallow water. Tony would not approach closer than a mile from the entrance, leaving as always a margin of safety.
When we anchored, five of us got into the little skiff, filling it completely. Any rough water would have swamped us. Sparky and Tiny rowed us in, competing violently with each other, which gave a curious twisting course to the boat.
Agiabampo is a great lagoon with a narrow seaward entrance. There is a little town ten miles in on the northern shore which we did not even try to reach. The entrance is intricate and obstructed with many shoals and sand-bars. It would be difficult without local knowledge to bring in a boat of any draft. We moved in around the northern shore; there were dense thickets of mangrove with little river-like entrances winding away into them. We saw great expanses of sand flat and the first extensive growth of eel-grass we had found.
82
But the eel-grass, which ordinarily shelters a great variety of animal life, was here not very rich at all. We saw the depressions where
botete,
the poison fish, lay. And there were great numbers of sting-rays, which made us walk very carefully, even in rubber boots, for a slash with the tail-thorn of a sting-ray can easily pierce a boot.
82
But the eel-grass, which ordinarily shelters a great variety of animal life, was here not very rich at all. We saw the depressions where
botete,
the poison fish, lay. And there were great numbers of sting-rays, which made us walk very carefully, even in rubber boots, for a slash with the tail-thorn of a sting-ray can easily pierce a boot.
The sand banks near the entrance were deeply cut by currents. High in the intertidal many grapsoid crabs
83
lived in slanting burrows about eighteen inches deep. There were a great many of the huge stalk-eyed conchs and the inevitable big hermit crabs living in the cast-off conch shells. Farther in, there were numbers of
Chione
and the blue-clawed swimming crabs. They seemed even cleverer and fiercer here than at other places. Some of the eel-grass was sexually mature, and we took it for identification. On this grass there were clusters of snail eggs, but we saw none of the snails that had laid them. We found one scale-worm,
84
a magnificent specimen in a
Cerianthus-like
tube. There were great numbers of tube-worms in the sand. The wind was light or absent while we collected, and we could see the bottom everywhere. On the exposed sand-bars birds were feeding in multitudes, possibly on the tube-worms. Along the shore, oyster-catchers hunted the burrowing crabs, diving at them as they sat at the entrances of their houses. It was not a difficult collecting station; the pattern, except for the eel-grass, was by now familiar to us although undoubtedly there were many things we did not see. Perhaps our eyes were tired with too much looking.
83
lived in slanting burrows about eighteen inches deep. There were a great many of the huge stalk-eyed conchs and the inevitable big hermit crabs living in the cast-off conch shells. Farther in, there were numbers of
Chione
and the blue-clawed swimming crabs. They seemed even cleverer and fiercer here than at other places. Some of the eel-grass was sexually mature, and we took it for identification. On this grass there were clusters of snail eggs, but we saw none of the snails that had laid them. We found one scale-worm,
84
a magnificent specimen in a
Cerianthus-like
tube. There were great numbers of tube-worms in the sand. The wind was light or absent while we collected, and we could see the bottom everywhere. On the exposed sand-bars birds were feeding in multitudes, possibly on the tube-worms. Along the shore, oyster-catchers hunted the burrowing crabs, diving at them as they sat at the entrances of their houses. It was not a difficult collecting station; the pattern, except for the eel-grass, was by now familiar to us although undoubtedly there were many things we did not see. Perhaps our eyes were tired with too much looking.
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