WILD SURMISE

OCTOBER 1985 # MINUS 1

AN ALMOST ANONYMOUS INFORMAL NOTE

SWEET TENDER FEELINGS

Love is the perception in another of what one understands to be the best in oneself. Hate, obviously, is the perception in another of what one understands to be the worst in oneself. Pride is the perception of good in oneself. Admiration is the perception of good in another. Arrogance is the perception of good in oneself that another is perceived as lacking. Envy is the perception of good in another that one lacks oneself. Shame is the perception of fault in oneself. Disapproval is the perception of fault in another. Humiliation is the perception of fault in oneself that another seems to lack. Contempt is the perception of fault in another not perceived in oneself. Grief is the perception of suffering in oneself. Pity is the perception of suffering in another. Sympathy is the perception of suffering in another of a kind that one shares. Kindness is the perception of feelings in another that one shares. Hostility is the perception of strangeness in another. Tolerance is hostility with respect. Indifference is the lack of perception of another.

These are feelings. A feeling may be expressed as an act not entirely appropriate. Thus pity may be expressed by an act of kindness. Envy may be expressed by an act of indifference. So there are various kinds of act that may express a feeling, and any act may not give a transparent view of the feeling that motivated it, although there are no doubt limits. No doubt, too, one person may have more than one feeling toward another person over a single span of time, just as one person may play more than one violin at a single time; but it is not commonly done.

There are many other feelings, such as shared joy and unshared fear, dominance with need for the other, dominance without need, shared submissiveness, curiosity. A relationship consists of the feelings between two people (pretty much one each way) and the acts, a canebrake of banners and sign posts, that embody those feelings. Romantic love is a relationship of mutual love between a man and a woman not near kin. There are many types of relationship, at least as many as the square of the number of ways one person may feel toward another. If you concede thirty ways of feeling, there are nine hundred kinds of relationship, excluding mixed feelings and feelings supported by inappropriate gestures. Love, romantic love, is only one, but we are told, it is the only proper relationship between parents and between potential parents.

Those who have been reared in a Judeo-Christian tradition are familiar with the commandment, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God..." How is that possible? How can a feeble, jerry-rigged, fleetingly alive, intermittently conscious dust bunny love an Infinite Being? Not much in common, after all. There's not much doubt about the commandment, so maybe there is something wrong with our understanding of love. Perhaps we should say, "Love is Abject Terror." We must establish a Shelter for Battered Mortals. But no, consider, if we are commanded to love God, then it must, at least in theory, be possible to do so. If it is possible to love God, then He must be good and must contain that which is the best in ourselves. All we need to do then is perceive it. That, of course, is quite beyond mortal power. Had we but understanding we would obey the commandment without effort.

On the other hand, if God has what we need to love Him, we must have what He needs to love us. An Infinite Being will not have overlooked the matter, so we may be confident that God loves us. Moreover, if we share what is lovesome for God, then we need but to perceive it to love one another. That may not be quite beyond mortal power.

Much follows from the commandment, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." Indeed, much of the Old Testament follows the implications of the possibility of us loving God and of God loving us, and much of the New Testament follows the implications of God loving us and the possibility of us loving each other. Much emphasis is given in the New Testament to the human-like aspect of God.

Perception is the problem. In this comfortable age, few speak of the terror of confronting the Divine. Consider it in purely physical terms. Loving one person, perhaps, may raise your temperature one degree, draw a single sigh, quicken your pulse ten percent, distract your mind for but a moment; you are an unresponsive person indeed. Now consider that you love all people, in all our billions. Now your temperature rises to that of a nuclear bomb, you breathe a supersonic typhoon, your heart turns to quivering granite and your mind is some fair approximation of the perception of Deity. Divine grace may, indeed, hold you together, but never your own strength.

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Afterward, will you truly be able to look on the rest of us with anything but arrogance?

The commandment goes on, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind." Good news. So far we are expected to go and no further. "And thy neighbor as thyself." The requirement to love is limited by the limit of what we are. It is not necessary to incinerate yourself in the attempt. Indeed, through the ages, romantic love has been one of the best analogies for divine love; the other analogy is parental love, which ideally is preceded by romantic love.

So there are degrees of love. There are two obvious limits on love. The first is the perception of the best in oneself; the second is the perception of another.

Think of the best on the self, not as some single gleaming point of irreducible goodness at the center of being. Think of it as an anthology. It is said that there was an oracle at Delphi, where the priestess sat over a crevice where fumes seeped from the earth; usually she babbled incoherently, but from time to time a god would come and speak through her. Poets and musicians have been likened, by a gentle convention, to the oracle. The artist writes; from time to time his muse comes and touches him, sings to him, sings through him, and at other times she nods asleep or goes into coma. The anthologist makes a collection on the basis of whether he thinks the muse was awake. The Best of Bach would be everything he wrote. The Best of Wordsworth would be a small proportion of his poetry, which part being some of the best poetry of all time.

The best of the self is all of the self that seems good, ranging from courage to skill at pitching pennies.

The first volume in the Best of the Self, is that divine spark, that mysterious something that we have in common with God in with each other. If you do not believe in such a spark, or even in God, that is all right at this point. Divine love is understood as an analogy to romantic love, and it would be a hard thing if one had to experience divine love first; one of the best guides to that divine love would be lost.

The second volume can be characterized as the private virtues. The Anglo-Saxon virtues used to be listed as manliness, loyalty, generosity and physical courage. No doubt there were Pictish virtues, perhaps humor, patience, dignity and nerve. Celtic virtues might include vivacity, thirst for knowledge, courtliness and honor. Dutch virtues of sturdiness, honesty, lack of squeamishness and lack of delusions. French virtues of refinement, intellect, enlightenment and flair. Nordic virtues of endurance, concentration, integrity and maturity. German virtues of heartiness, thoroughness, studiousness and responsibility. Before you point out that some of these virtues may be found among members of more than one group, or one group may have more

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or less than four cardinal virtues, or that I must surely run out of virtues before running out of nations, I should point out that a lot of nations come with their own language. Since meanings of words for things like the private virtues are so subjective, it seems unlikely that they translate cleanly from one language to the next. The supply of nations will be exhausted long before the supply of virtues. Most cultures have rules of hospitality, recognize independence of spirit, understand reverence, and know mercy, sense humility, and reward frugality. But one culture may not understand them in the same way and certainly not use the same word as a different culture.

There are many private virtues, and one person has many. All that person detects in himself are part of his anthology of self. Do not think it improper for a woman to incorporate manliness. As many boys learn to appreciate manly vigor from their mothers as from their fathers. And a strong heterosexual drive may be the same drive for a man as for a woman. Indeed, if you watch peacocks strut, you may decide that the male peacock is far more interested in his own display than the healthy female peahen is. They clearly both recognize the same display as meaning the same thing.

These virtues may be developed to a greater or lesser extent, and at times they will of course come into conflict. But as many as appear and are understood as good and are consistently developed, they are included in the Best of the Self.

Then there are the public virtues, the third volume. These are things that are easily recognized, that can honestly be included on a questionnaire and answered simply, that are pretty much obvious to the casual observer.

Physical appearance includes age, height, build, eye, skin, and hair color and texture. It includes muscle tone and skin temperature and moisture. How the eyes are used and many subtle features of gait and gesture. It includes the shape of the features and relative strength of muscle groups. It includes reaction time and whether a startle reaction is present. It includes steadiness or tremor of the hand and breathing pattern.

There is nice straight hair and nice curly hair. There is no universal agreement on which is better. But one only has one head and, if there is any hair on it, THAT hair is what is to be included in the anthology. If the hair has been lost, it is still in the anthology; it is still part of the perceived self.

There are then matters of background, place of birth and childhood, racial and ethnic background, family, old friends, education, and religion. Any of these may be absent, unknown or (at terrible cost) regarded as evil, degraded or despised. But with anything like luck, these things will all be included as good.

There are matters of current status. Intelligence, voice patterns1 occupation, home, current circle of friends and family.

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There are matters of taste, preferred hobbies, sports, entertainment, food, and clothing. And of course there are plans.

The fourth volume I would call the dark virtues. There is every reason to question whether they exist at all, but exist or not they should be mentioned.

Many people believe in some sort of force beyond the immediately obvious physical ones. You may call it superstition, wishful thinking or dream, but it is widely known.

I refer to the belief that there is a moral structure to human affairs. There are statements of the form "It was destined to be" or "It was not to be." It is said, "They were star crossed," doomed to disappointment, or "It was a match made in heaven." It is said, "Love always finds a way." "True love never dies."

The belief surfaces in many ways. It may be the rising of the hackles at the telling of an old ghost story that asserts the human will is ultimately invincible. It may be afternoons spent closeted with a romantic novel. It may mean honestly earned money spent on mediums and astrologers.

And it comes up again and again in the dreams of night, one utter impossibility after another in dazzling procession, the dream universe yielding before one inexorable law, not that of the individual's desires, perhaps, but of his expectations.

Start a tale that begins with the cry of a loon and an old mansion above the misty rushes of the marsh at dawn, and I will expect a tale of wish fulfillment.

Such is the fourth volume of the self. Whether it is demonic, or only a disease, or idle, or healthy or even true, I cannot say. Perhaps some elements are good and some bad. But to the extent that it is good, it is part of the best.

I do not propose above to have listed every characteristic of the human, but to have established four categories. Quiz: Into which category would you put the feeling you get while gazing wistfully out the window at the rain? A dimple? Moral courage? The capacity for love?

Having outlined the self, we must now perceive the self. There is a nice big word, epistemology, which means the study of how things are known. It is precisely on this point of perceiving the self that epistemology tends to run haywire. People begin to say things like, "Nobody REALLY knows whether he REALLY knows anything anyway." That road leads toward a persuasion called nihilism; we are talking about romantic love. There is a difference.

The first volume consisted of the divine spark, what we share with God. This, of course, must be the most important element of the personality. However, we are unable to perceive it without

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Divine aid. Besides we may not believe it exists anyway. Besides, if we DO believe it exists, we believe romantic and parental love will help us perceive it. So we shouldn't have to be able to perceive it first. With that apology, we put aside the first volume, declare it irrelevant to romantic love except in retrospect, and go on.

By the way, for you practicing epistemologists, perception of self is part of the divine spark, since it must also be a characteristic of an Infinite Being. That may be part of the reason you burn out your brain when you try to think about it too much. Here is a puzzle for you. Why does a sense of self seem to be a characteristic of certain pets? (Thinking about dogs is pretty safe.)

Volume two, the private virtues, how do we perceive them in ourselves? Initially, this looks like a difficulty, since self awareness lies in the first volume, the imponderables, since some of the private virtues are counterpoised, like generosity and frugality, and since self perceived modesty entails the little paradox, "I'm so modest, I'm vain about it." Add to those problems the human capacity for self deception, wishful thinking and rewriting personal history. Self understanding looks like the study of a lifetime.

The problem is not so great. Those private virtues that we recognize in ourselves belong to us. So do those virtues that we cultivate in ourselves. Consider three statements: "This doesn't scare me." "I wish this didn't scare me so much." "I don't want to know about it." It depends on circumstances, of course, but the first two can both be understood to be reflections of courage perceived in the self. It is probably rare for a person to sit down and make a list of every private virtue he knows, rarer still to indicate whether he has it, works on it or despairs of it, and rarest to go through the list in alphabetical order, spending one day on each in rotation trying to cultivate that virtue. Yet we all pretty much try to do what we think is right and try to be the best people we can be. Putting labels on different virtues is not the most important part of the effort, but we understand ourselves, in part, in terms of those virtues.

The third volume is the easy one, the public virtues. We hear our own voice, see our own reflections and notice our own actions. With luck, we know something of our own background and family. We even have an inside track on what we were really trying to do or what we really meant to say. And if that weren't enough, there are always our friends, who will point out to us what they think of us with disarming candor and disquieting insight. This is the self that total strangers can respond to, the self of looks, words and actions. It is also the self of memories, beliefs and plans.

works on some of the public virtues, but not all of them. No amount of brainwashing will add or subtract a freckle. And a freckle is easily perceived. Perceiving the public virtues is easy by definition.

The fourth volume of self, that part subject to ghosts, dreams and magic, is difficult. If there are not subtle, mysterious and unknown forces influencing our lives, then nothing is lost by ignoring them. If there ARE such forces, they are unknowable, since they would otherwise be part of the public self. Unknowable, they will not reward study, yet the whole field of mysterious forces and the apprehension of a supernatural pattern to the world maintain an astonishing hold on people's imagination.

For instance, if you were to ask me what a "sun dog" was, I would say a false image of the sun produced by clouds of tiny ice crystals at high altitude. If you persisted and wanted to know the exact size and shape of those crystals, the bonding angles of the water molecules, the refractive index of ice and whatever else it took to know exactly to predict the size and location of a sun dog, I would shrug and say, "It's written down somewhere; try the library." But ask me about the astrological prediction for today, and I would have no trouble finding it for you in the day's paper.

Magical thinking is part of the perceived self. What to do with it? I have a suggestion. The magical forces follow the public forces. Without trying to be too rational about what is inherently irrational, consider two possibilities. One is that perception of magic is tribal myth. In that case, obviously, the magic goes only where the myth goes and possibly not even there. The other alternative, that magic has some force, means we must look at the myths themselves. The most superficial examination of classical myth shows the gods playing favorites, particularly where they are honored. In that case, the magic still goes where the myth goes. In either case, mysterious forces, if any, correspond with public virtues.

However dearly you cherish your superstitions, you will not betray them if you do not betray your real-world (third volume) identity and heritage. And however much you detest superstition, you will not fall its prey, as long as you make your decisions in the cool reasonable light of what you know about yourself and your world.

There is another way to understand any mysterious influences that one suspects in oneself. That way is to say that all mysterious forces are simply waking memories of ordinary night dreams. Dreams follow the same logic or lack or logic as magic; wishes, or at least expectations, are fulfilled against an incoherent background. Dreams must be a deeply ingrained part of our makeup, since we seem to share them with most other mammals.

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In any case, the dream world, to the extent that it does anything, seems to follow the track of the real, public world.

Thus our perception of the best of our self if limited to our perception of our own private virtues and our perception of our public, social image. Love is also limited by our ability to perceive things in others.

My dentist once remarked, "You father is the most noble, high minded, decent, honorable person I know." I would have said that I rather agreed, but my mouth was full of strange dangling instruments, so I just gurgled and listened. "Yep," the dentist went on, "a really fine man. He always pays his bills right away. Yessiree, send him a bill and he pays it by return mail. Uhuh, never seen anything like it. Sits right down that very day, makes out a check and I get it by return mail. Quite a man!"

My reaction was, "He's not being noble; he just does it that way because it's one thing he can be sure he gets right." I didn't say that, and on reflection, I had to concede the good dentist's wisdom. Alas, all we may perceive of each other is our public virtues.

We, like the dentist, may draw conclusions about the private person from what we detect of the public person, but there is a hazard. The hazard is that we begin to judge. To see, to

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perceive, without judging would seem initially difficult. But it can be done. Indeed, it is commonly remarked that a person in love may be singularly lacking in judgement. It comes easy. Love hopes, believes, and endures. Judgement is sterner.

Perhaps seeing without judging is, indeed, folly. Perhaps the ability is a bit of the Divine Spark, the Merciful Patience that forestalls the burying of all our kith and ilk beneath boiling brimstone. Perhaps it takes humility to refrain from judging. But I rather think that in order not to judge, one need simply remember the distinction between volume one and volume two of the self. That which is ultimate in us is not perceived; the most we perceive even of ourselves is our private virtues. Lose the distinction and we set ourselves up as false gods; love disappears and only judgement remains.

So there are two limits to love. One is the perception of good in oneself. The other is the ability to understand the other, this last based on the public virtues. Many common observations make sense. A couple that might reasonably fall in love is called a match. The question "What have they in common?" becomes critical. Old married couples look alike; else they would not have grown old together. Opposites attract, but they do not love.

There is such a thing as love at first sight. Consider, a single glance reveals skin color and sheen, eye color and motion, hair color and sheen, height, build (always allowing for the man's heavier frame), nose shape, chin shape, jaw size, eye position, mouth shape, ear position. Show me a normal teenager, and I will show you someone who can nail down a half dozen of such variables as accurately as the lengthiest analysis. A few words convey name, home town, church, national background, accent, education, breeding, intelligence, manners, attentiveness and opinions. Show me someone who reveals less than a half dozen such things and I will show you a spy. Twelve characteristics, and for each one can easily the question "Is this person more like me than are 90 per cent of all people of that sex?" Suppose there are twelve yeses. The chances of that are one in a trillion. Do not tell someone disappointed in love, "You will find another." There are not enough people on the planet to produce another.

Fortunately, it is not quite so bleak. The public virtues tend to track each other in predictable patterns. Red hair and freckles go together for no good reason except that they have gone together before. Love prevailing, they will continue to do so. Enjoying dogs and enjoying guns may go together the same way. Or enjoying classical music and classical books. Indeed, public and private virtues all tend to track each other; although it would be folly to assume that it is always the case, the tendency is that for every obvious virtue that is shared, the next virtue is more likely to be shared. If it were not so, what hope for any of us?

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It is the shared virtues, the appearance, the heritage, the goals, the values, as well as the private virtues that form the framework within which love can exist. The greater that shared framework, the greater the possible love.

There are three obvious problems.

The first is that most public virtues are everybody's property. And "everybody" is seldom slow to make a snap judgement as to whether a match is a good one. One may watch couples year after year after decade suffering for what is on surface a mismatch. Good men, hard working, brilliant men are penalized and their careers marred. It is as if society says, "This man works hard, but he obviously wants to fail in the long run or he would not have set himself up with such an obvious handicap," and then sets out to arrange that failure. Who knows how women and children suffer?

There are many kinds of relationships, and romantic love is certainly not the only one that can lead to marriage. Oddly, it is not rare at all to see in the public media the picture of the black haired boy and the yellow haired girl together. Somebody thinks that is what people want to see. But in real life, people want to see romantic love they can believe in. "Everybody", too, has expectations; everybody dreams.

The second problem occurs, by contrast, when love does exist, at least on the surface. That is jealousy. Love is possessive. It tends to be so without apology. After all, what is detected in the other is the very idea of self. Of course, with romantic love, where the love is mutual, there is every reason to have mutual trust. But where love is one way, or there is substantial reason to suspect love may be one way, then suspicion and jealousy are perfectly natural. They are the anticipation of loss, of unendurable loss.

The third problem is loss, and the loss may be terrible indeed. Imagine that the best someone perceives in the self suddenly decides to go of with somebody else. There goes the best. More of value has been lost than remains behind. And, depending on the circumstances, there may be nothing to say and no recourse at all.

While Achilles was sulking in his tent over a rather petty wrong, the Greek army, lacking his help, was getting badly beaten by the Trojans. Patroclus, Achilles' best friend, took the armor of Achilles to wear into the battle, so that the Trojans would be frightened, thinking Achilles had returned. Hector, prince of Troy, caught Patroclus and killed him, thinking he was killing Achilles. When they brought the news to Achilles, the hero responded by throwing dirt on himself, tearing his hair out by the handful and rolling howling in the dust.

Achilles loved Patroclus, loved Patroclus as he loved himself. It was not romantic love, but it was love. Now he had lost

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Patroclus, Patroclus who had gone out to fight for Achilles' own honor, Patroclus who need not have fought at all, Patroclus who had stood up to the mighty Hector, Patroclus who was the best of Achilles save what was Achilles' by accident of birth. Patroclus was lost. And of all the terrible pain described in the ILIAD, the only pain greater that the pain of Achilles when Patroclus was lost was the pain of Hector when Hector thought of what would become of Hector's wife when Hector was killed. You see, there was romantic love been Hector and his wife Andromache.

There are some good things to be remembered about love. One is hope. It is not total madness to expect that love be returned. After all, one is not going to really fall in love with anyone much different from oneself. So if two people look the same and speak the same and understand the same things to be good, they might see the same good in each other.

To be sure, a man loves the womanliness in a woman, as a woman loves manliness in a man. Part of that manliness may be a heavier frame; part of it must be a need for woman. So for women, the softer frame, per chance, and the need for man for sure. It is the heterosexuality that is perceived as the common virtue, the common need and the common glory.

Lovers share their needs.

A second lucky good thing about romantic love is that it may lead to children and to parental love. It is understandable that parents love their children; after all, children resemble their parents (the more obviously as the parents resemble each other), and the parent easily recognizes the best of himself in the child. A few faults too, maybe, but easily forgiven. And happy the child who has two parents he can love without trying to be two different people. And happy the rest of us who live in a world with people who had such a childhood.

And thirdly. I wasn't going to get into it again, but if I had to teach someone about divine love, I would not try to interest him in ecumenical movements or love of the whole world or love of abstractions or social ideals. I think I would speak of romantic love: and of parental love in its season.

Editor's Note:

Wild Surmise is an occasional newsletter on speculative matter. The plan now is to go into positive numbers, if old moneybags, I mean our esteemed sponsor, continues to manage. Next issue will carry Booty on weather. M thought the article above didn't talk about women enough, so Booty has agreed the write about women in the following issue

We had a bit of a hurricane near here last month. M spent the whole time standing on a crag overlooking the sea, hitting his furry chest with his fist shouting, "Strike here!" Booty got soaked trying to claw his way under his waterbed. M is a little odd about the weather. Once during a thunderstorm, he fancied he saw his name written in fire in the sky. When Booty said that lightning always makes an "m," M said, "So you noticed it, too?"

The mystery of the veterans remains. Of the roughly ten million who returned alive from Vietnam, only nine million could be found alive in 1980 -- three times the expected death rate. So far no one has confirmed or effectively refuted their disappearance. I have been told that the October 1983 issue of CIRCULATION (a cardiology journal) Volume 68 Supp III printed an abstract that indicated that patients with coronary heart disease may have measurable deterioration of their blood supply to the heart while enduring the mental stress of arithmetic. So far as I know, no one has looked for such changes in normal people subject to extreme emotional stress.

Dark fell as I came to a series of falls. I took the canoe out on the north side of the river, and climbing a steep bank, made camp in a barren, dusty field. It was a hot night, unusual for Maine that time of year. I got a fire going and looked over the food situation. As I did, the mosquitoes began to take the same sort of interest in me.

The meat had begun to turn. I would have to cook it that night, since it would not improve in the days ahead. If there is a way for meat to grow old gracefully, it has never done so in my hands. Sadly I realized that I would have to eat all of the nearly tainted meat and nothing else. The mosquitoes did not seem to be hampered by similar mixed feelings. I got the fire going, the meat on and put on all my heaviest clothes for protection, in spite of the heat.

While it is not vital equipment, I did have along a flask of rye whiskey. Sometimes, when it has been a very cold and strenuous day, a swallow helps get the kinks out of the muscles, and makes it possible to get some sleep even on cold hard ground. Running rapids alone can get you very keyed up.

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The book says that you must always travel with three boats. A canoe holds at most three and at least two, so three is the minimum number that allows for a lost craft. The reason you don't try to shoot rapids alone in a canoe is that the boat must always be kept parallel with the current. If you are headed straight at a rock, turning aside only brings the side of the canoe against the rock. The rock lifts one side, the other side dips and drinks, and soon the boat is on edge, perpendicular to the current, which then simply wraps the boat around the rock. Proper technique calls for the bow man to pull the bow sharply away from the rock and for the stern man to react so as to keep the boat parallel. The bow position also has a better view of deeper rocks just before they strike. Etiquette calls for the bow to shout, "rock!" At other times the stern sets the overall course. The bow also provides the muscle for level paddling. Besides, two heads are better than one.

The book does not say it, but it is possible to handle a boat alone, as long as the boat moves aggressively forward, say faster in the water than the speed of the water itself. In that case, provided the water has been adequately scouted, it is still possible to maneuver, using the old classical J stroke from the stern. If something unexpected turns up, it is possible to move the bow over by ruddering with the paddle and then pull the stern the same way. But at that point, you are dead in the water, and you had better have a plan that lets you stop or regain speed before anything else happens, because dead in the water, you have no control.

It was so hot the rye was pointless for relaxing, but I tried washing some of the meat down with it. It was not a good combination.

By now the joyful mosquitoes had called their friends. I tried sitting in the smoke from the fire. After all, if smoke stupefies bees, it ought to work on mosquitoes; they stung like bees. It did not stupefy the mosquitoes. I dug the rye back out and tried smearing it on for insect repellent. Before that evening, I had never had to deal with a fighting drunken mosquito.

Time passed as I slapped. By now I was covered with a patina of dirt, sweat, grease, crushed mosquito, blood, soot and rye. The combination made the bites sting as well as itch. I began to wonder if I was having a good time. I looked at the cool dark river.

The canoe looked pale under the gibbous moon. I wondered if mosquitoes could travel over water, or would the fish get them. I wasn't getting any sleep anyway. I went down to the shore.

Untying the bowline from the sapling, I flipped the canoe over, tossed in a paddle, and pushed the craft stern foremost to the lands edge and out onto the invisible water. One foot in the midline of the canoe just in front of the bow seat, crouching low,

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the other foot just at the water line, I launched and lowered myself quickly into the bottom. I crawled to the stern.

Out on the water, it was cool even in heavy clothes. Mosquitoes did not follow. The moon seemed very close and bright, although the water was still an invisible blackness. The only sound was the thunder of the falls and the drip from the paddle between strokes as I went in long lazy loops about the broad water.

A kayak is a better solo white water boat than a canoe. But a canoe seems easier to load with days of supplies. Besides, the canoe has that proud upward swoop of the bow. Loaded, the bow stays low. That makes the canoe easier to handle from the stern, of course, but now unloaded and not going anywhere, the bow stood a little higher. I wondered if I could get it to go higher if I pushed myself back off my knees and sat on the seat. I tried it. The bow came up a little higher. I crawled up to the bow, where the seat wasn't in the way, and knelt facing the stern, which now rose higher still. At last I pushed myself back onto the peak of the bow, and the stern rose grandly head high, as I paddled about under the delirious light of the gibbous moon.

Suddenly the moon swung in a long arc and burst into a hundred wavering fragments, my face felt cool, the roar of the falls ceased and my clothes tightened all around me with a firm, warm embrace. I realized I had fallen in and was under water. I swam toward moonlight. By the time I broke the surface, water was finding its way through clothing like so many blades, keen and numbingly cold. The canoe was a few feet off, scudding away toward the falls.

At that moment, I felt a little tug in my hand. I looked. There in my fist was the bow line. The canoe came to a gentle stop. Already shuddering with cold, I pulled it back, stripped off my clothes and threw them in. Very carefully, so as not to swamp the craft, I dragged myself over the gunnel. The trick is to reach across and pull on the far side. I flopped into the bottom colder and happier. The paddle was there.

The book does not say much about how to paddle back upstream away from falls, but it can be done if the current isn't too swift. I made my way back to camp.

Sleep was no problem.