There’s something primordial about water. It quences your thirst, puts out fires and makes a soothing sound as it laps at a sandy shoreline. Thus my day was remarkably devoid of randomness today as it unfolded exactly as planned. This is a rare occurence.
We made minimal preparations, picked up a few supplies on the way to the marina and loaded up the boat and were quickly sputtering along the river at a leisurely pace; the leisurely pace was not my idea…there’s a problem with the engine that prevents it from planning properly so instead of zooming on the water’s surface at 45 KPH we were scooting (rather plowing) the water at about 15 K/h. Notwithstanding, we had the wind in our hair, the sun shining brightly and a bright mid-July day (though it was actually August 15th).
We found an island beach where my spouse unfolded her chair and ebook and relaxed as the children built sand castles and enjoyed the mud. I busied myselft on the boat, fixing this, that and some other thing until I ran out…then I worked on practicing my knots. And when I grew tired of that I did nothing. And it was good.
Doing nothing is good because it almost never leads to something bad, and you never hear of someone hurting themselves or getting killed doing nothing. So even though I briefly regretted not having had the forethought to bring something else to do, like my computer or a magazine, in the end I was grateful for the opportunity to do nothing. An opportunity that was brought to me by water….I could be on a boat for many hours getting gently rocked and never get bored. And there’s something about the sound of waves hitting the shore that just makes me feel like everything is where it needs to be.
It was a great day.