Walking the Beach to Bellingham Harvey, Manning, Northwest Reprints and Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, Oregon 265 pages, PaperbackOriginally published: Seattle: Madrona Publishers, c1986
Harvey Manning, you may know, is something of a guide book guru, having written, or contributed to, a number of first rate Washington outdoor guides, including that pioneering climbers’ bible, Mountaineering - The Freedom of the Hills, a book I once read endlessly. I’ve used Manning’s hiking guides now and then and rather liked the author’s “attitude” that oozed in and around the trail descriptions. So when I saw Walking the Beach to Bellingham with his name on it, I thought, “cool, that’s a great idea . . . All those bits and pieces of shoreside I’ve wondered about, but never visited.”
Alas, my enthusiasm plummeted wading into this book. For as Manning himself states “If this isn’t a guidebook, what is it? A book of sermons, perhaps.” And it is preachy. It’s also a rambling remembrance of his family. It is a pagan to lost Northwest Indians and a repetitive bellowing for things to be the way they use to be . . . Or something other than they are. And there are many, many citings of his past mountaineering exploits. I found the book, in the end, to be irritating and somewhat boring. By the time he peters out in downtown Bellingham, I didn’t like him very much. Yet a back page testimonial states that “This is simply one of my favorite books of all time. . . A great curmudgeonly wit . . . Snapping and singing with wonder and whim.” Maybe I didn’t get it.
Still, the notion for the walk remains a good one. Grinding my boat up and down Saratoga Passage over the years, I’ve often glassed the passing beaches and wondered about walking them. So Manning’s northward trek had considerable appeal for me - as long as he did the walking which the jacket back states to be 3,000 foot miles over a two year walking period. That doesn’t make much sense to me, (it’s 150 miles by beach to Bellingham). Maybe someone added an extra 0 to that number.
Starting in the Fall of 1976 with a loop around Bainbridge island - one done in stages - his walk was not a continuous point-to-point trek, Manning begins reeling off regional history. He recites Ferry history, explorer history, Indian history. He explains geology and presents the origin of many place names. He also lays out a good deal of his family’s history. In short, he writes whatever comes to his mind. We learn about his family’s early days on Bainbridge, we know he eats kipper snacks and Pepsi for his hiking lunch - every day. We learn which state ferry boats he likes and dislikes (but not why). His Boy Scout troop movements during the 1930s are frequently cited. And he pulls the reader into his struggle to quit smoking cigarettes.
Manning does know a lot about the Northwest - or he did extensive research as he wrote the book. If you like reading about everything from the spread of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet into what became Puget Sound, to the complexity of the Skagit River delta, to the 1916 Everett Massacre, you may well enjoy this book. Manning has a forceful, romantic, often flowery prose style that rolls right along. At times, the style was fitting.
His was a winter trek. Rain or shine, he left his home on Tiger Mountain and drove his VW beetle to his previous hike’s termination point and walked north. That meant travel on roads, highways, beaches, private property, marshes, sloughs, meadows and sand dunes. Overall, he lays out a rough balance between man-made things he doesn’t like and natural aspects he does. He seemed the most enthusiastic about the Skagit river delta, probably because it remains the wildest bit of shoreside between Seattle and Bellingham. Travel across the Delta took him several days as you might expect. And I think he really liked Fishtown. Do you know where Fishtown is? Or why he liked it?
Manning is a landlubber and land lover. When he does note boats, he dismisses them as “stinkpots.” “Power corrupts. Stinkpots corrupt absolutely. . . If boats have oars, paddles, sails or modest little eggbeater kickers, there can be peace on the Whulj. Some stinkpotters could be taught better: inside many a Chriscrafter is a rowboater crying to get out. As for the rest, they’re as hopeless as dirt-bikers, and the prescription is a spread of Long Lances. Scratch ‘em off the list, they never will be missed.” So . . . there you have it!
He does mention a few of his Puget Sound (he uses the indian name “Whulj” for Puget Sound) voyages to various islands and shores, but his boating experiences were very secondary to terra firma rambles. I had hoped the book would expand my knowledge of the greater Puget Sound. And while I was inspired to do some new walking or boating (skiffing?) in Port Susan and the Skagit wetlands, I was, in the end, irritated by the author. But maybe irritation was part of his environmentalist shock therapy. If I hadn’t been planning to write a book review, I would have chucked the book half-read onto my expanding bedside “curmudgeon” pile. You might respond differently.
Three Years in a Twelve Foot Boat Ladd, Stephen, Seekers press, Seattle 2000, 390 pages, Paperback
Since we’re reviewing strange journeys, here’s one that matches Tristan Jones’ Incredible Voyage. Hardly a “yachty” cruising tale, this is a fantasy adventure lived out by a local Puget Sound man, a tale that bounces from foolishness to love to danger to endurance. I have to admit that during the long reading of this book, I often glanced at the title where my dyslexic eye/brain saw “Twelve Years in a Three Foot boat,” which for reasons I can’t explain, seemed a more fitting title. It’s a long journey and a long read (but a good one!).
Stephen Ladd was a gainfully employed Urban Planner who for reasons not entirely clear, chucked it all, built a little wooden boat and set off for South America. Not down the West Coast mind you, but beginning in the Milk River of Southern Canada. Down the Milk to the Missouri to the Mississippi to the Gulf. Then by ship to Panama. Then down the wild west coast of Panama and Columbia to a road trip high in the Andes and then down Amazon jungle rivers to the Caribbean for some island hoping north to the States. Incredible!
An adventure especially incredible after you’ve actually seen the boat, as I did last Fall at the Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival. It’s very, very small and does not project much yachting comfort. It closely resembled a rounded coffin. So if I was happy to have Manning do the beach walking for me, I had no envy for Ladd’s waterborne misadventures.
Following extensive reading, Ladd came up with a 30’ design that was “perfect” for his projected voyaging. But he didn’t have the money or the time to build such a craft. So he shrunk “Squeak” to 12’ and 250 lbs - the maximum weight he thought he could pull ashore. In August of 1990, he had friends truck man and boat over the Rockies to a launch spot east of Glacier National Park. “The river (the Milk) was just right: big enough to clear my nine-foot oars, slow enough to manage. . .” He rows through southern Alberta until the river goes flat in a Montana reservoir. He learns that there are five more dams below, all filled with mud, snags and about a jillion hungry mosquitos. Since Ladd navigated by highway map, future hazards were sketchy. At the suggestion of a BLM office, he trucks the boat 60 miles south to the Missouri and begins again. Constantly meeting friendly, helpful people along the way, Ladd gained meals and dry beds, romance (okay - sex) and transport around dams. Really, this section of the book shadows “Huckleberry Finn,” so varied and interesting are the people he encounters. (And that remains true to the adventure’s end) Some of them find Ladd exotic relief to their ordinary lives. Others admit to their own wanderlust and need for solitude. All and all, his chance encounters are more interesting than the actual down-river struggle.
While Squeak was configured as a sailing sprit-boom cat yawl, Ladd rowed the rivers against constant headwinds and despaired about his southerly progress. Winter was coming! In the largest man-made lake in the U.S. he’s once again aground! “Ran amuck” is more apt, because the thing I dreaded most had occurred. I was stuck in a bottomless muck the consistency of yogurt, far from land. . . The wind wailed furiously in my ears.” He climbs overboard and “. . . discovered a “slurping” motion by which I could drag her, a sort of slow-motion sidestroke. . .” The lake is full of rotting snags. There were oceanic waves. But finally, a following wind enables him to cover180 miles in six days. Good, but not fast enough. He’ll be midway down the Mississippi in the dead of winter. So he does a delivery car driveaway from Bismarck to Omaha for a re-launch.
Across Nebraska and Kansas and south through Missouri aboard “Squeak.” Constantly meeting characters who were not the type you’d meet in the summer San Juans. “I’m sure glad you showed up, Steve. This week would have been real boring if you hadn’t.” “This was the bittersweet crux of traveling. On the brink of leaving, loneliness held me back, binding me to newfound friends, yet it pushed me away too, in search of a fuller love. . . “ Down the river where “I savored the river towns: Glasgow, with its high hill, brick churches, and riverfront grain elevators. . . Thunderstorms struck. Rain fell so hard I couldn’t see, but it was warm, exciting. I yelped with glee.”
Entering the Mississippi and bound for St. Louis, he disregards an “All Boats” navigational channel and is nearly swept over a serious waterfall. Aw, the thrills of road map navigation! Down the Big Muddy - tow boats with barges, dying towns, healthy towns, days of rain until a chance meeting with Traci in Helena, Arkansas. A photographer doing a “delta project,” she and Steve hit it off. They agree to meet periodically as he moves downriver. He falls for her only to find that she’s bi-polar or something like it. Loving one minute, cold and distant the next.
“Slowly the river mended me, (heartbreak) I was in its almighty embrace. It flowed. I with it. Its power and pace reached down into me” They reunite in Baton Rouge. He reaches New Orleans on December 11th, 1990 glad to be done with rivers. He and Traci take an apartment and Steve struggles with Traci’s “A” and “B” personas. He arranges for freighter passage from Mobile, Alabama to Panama and leaves Traci dockside with promised South American reunions.
Ladd works his way to Panama as a cabin boy, chipping paint all day. Panamanian officials nearly squash the adventure as Squeak has no “papers”. Eventually, “exceptions” are found, passage through the canal happens and Ladd is poised on the Pacific, bound south through waters that everyone warns him about. Island hoping at first, Ladd then begins his difficult passage south along the Panamanian and Colombian coasts. There’s talk of pirates and thieves. But surfing onto the beach he is repeatedly welcomed by poor subsistence fishermen/farmers. Trying to sleep through a storm one night at sea, he awakes to the boat rolling over. She remains capsized until the next morning when he is able to roll her over and “Euphoric, I bailed out the cockpit, then bailed the cabin some more. I opened the aft locker and water gushed into the cockpit - bailed that too. Then I pulled the boat parts out of the water and reassembled them. The hatch cover had come loose and sank, taking my compass with it. . . My clothes bag was missing, along with both flashlights, main halyard, main snotter, nautical chart, half my food and my lead line and reel. But that was nothing! I was alive, and could continue the journey.”
Which he does, rowing on to a down-at-the-heels village name Nuqui. There he sets about repairing the boat and copes with bad food and amebic dysentery. The people of Nuqui are generous and helpful. Setting off once again, Ladd soon drops into a pattern. Row-sail 30 to 50 miles, pull into a village recommended by the last village, hang out with the locals for fishing, diving, drinking, talking and learning how to successfully (mostly) surf Squeak onto the beach. He arrives at Buenaventura and “. . . brushed my feet off and lay down. The mosquito net fell into place, bring to a close the Pacific Ocean phase of the voyage. Weariness and relief overwhelmed me. Only later would the full impact of those six stressful months become apparent. It was the hardest thing I had ever done. But it was worth my giddy sense of discovery, my feeling of having found a way through a land of unknown dangers and delights to a semicivilization of the far side.”
Trucking the boat to Cali, Ladd settles in for what becomes a four month writing and woman chasing period. Eventually he continues by pickup truck over the Andes to Bogota, then further east over the Cordillera Oriental and finally to the Meta river. Down through the hot, dry plains living constantly in a fog of mosquitoes, rowing against a headwind, Ladd travels during the early morning and the evening hours. Yet sleeping through the hot days is nearly impossible. On the other hand, he is frequently escorted by “pink” dolphins in the water and howling monkeys in the trees.
Ladd is well received by the poor villagers along the river. He averages 25 miles a night, even better after he learns how to remain in the main channel and takes advantage of a full moon to boost his nightly average up to 50 miles. He reaches Puerto Carreno following “Night after night (when) I had entered not just an external realm, but an internal one. This semi-hypnotic state intensified the emotions that welled up upon reaching the mouth of the Meta River. Those emotions were relief from fear, awe of nature, and a joy I could taste in my mouth.”
Half way to the Caribbean now, Squeak enters the larger Orinoco river and Ladd tries to get involved with yet another confused, unobtainable female photographer. Adventures continue:
“I noticed a wall of white haze about a mile ahead (in the river). It advanced upon me, blotting out land and sky. . .I released the main halyard from its clamcleat at the base of the mast, but the squall exploded on me . . . The unsupported boom and sail tripped in the water as Squeak careened and drove backward. I clung to the cabin top, struggling for balance. Squeak and I were like a tumbleweed blowing across the water. The noise was deafening. . . I let fly the mizzen sheet, and the greater windage of the bare mainmast threw her bow downwind. She was flying near hull speed. The waves grew within a minute or two to about ten feet. I felt the beginning of a surfing motion on their steep faces. Eventually I would either capsize or crash into a bank.” But he manages to row out of the maelstrom behind an island.
He reaches tide water sailing over broad deltas populated by friendly indigenous people and the glowing red eyes of nighttime caimans. Finally into the Gulf of Paria facing a dangerous passage north to Trinidad with 20 knot winds, where, of course, his rudder breaks. Steering by oar, he reaches a Trinidad beach village, carves a new rudder and is well received by customs officials. “After 14 months in Latin America, Trinidad was a pleasant culture shock.” Taken in by the Trinidad Yacht Club, Ladd once again hangs out with a mix of Caribbean characters. Good luck gets Squeak and Ladd passage aboard a coastal freighter headed north for Grenada.
Once again, Ladd connects with a woman who gives him shelter and love. Soon off to the Grenadines beating into 20 knots winds, Ladd and Squeak master their most difficult ocean passage. In Bequia he meets yet another woman and spends lazy days hiking, diving, eating and socializing. He finds life in Bequia seductively lazy. It’s hard to leave. But he has a date with his Grenada girl friend to cruise the coast of St. Vincent.
Then north again to St. Lucia across 25 miles of windward passage. “October 27 dawned too hazy to see the Pitons. I launched at 6:30 a.m. And was soon in the full force of the maelstrom. Even with the main reefed and ten gallons of water ballast beside me, I had trouble keeping Squeak on her feet. She plowed into waves and belly-flopped off their crests, yet stubbornly held her course. . . New waves cropped up all the time. They sometimes broke over me, dumping a few gallons into the cockpit. The weight of the water stopped her in her tracks. I just bailed and kept on sailing, frantically working the sheets and tiller. . . The crossing took 7 hours, three less than expected. Squeak had performed magnificently.”
Martinique, then Dominica, romance and constant encounters with fascinating people. Guadeloupe and Montserrat next, on a level you’ll never match chartering. (A Haitian tells him “In passing these narrows you are leaving the Caribbean Sea and entering another very big sea.” “What is the name of the Sea I am entering?” asks Ladd. “The Pacific, perhaps . . .Or the Atlantic. I am not sure.”) Joined once again by the Grenada girl friend, Ladd tows Squeak behind a rotting big sailboat captained by an eccentric expat German. He gets “lost” sailing to Tortola but eventually “finds” Virgin Gorda. Then along the Puerto Rican coast to the Dominican Republic, even after everyone warned him of it’s danger. Yet Ladd finds it to be “the Latin America I knew: dirty, noisy, high-spirited, glorious.”
“The chaos of my life sang to me, because my hands were around the neck of chaos, squeezing it to my will. The harder I squeezed, the more tasks I checked off my list of things to do before sailing to increasingly frightful coasts: the horn of souther Hispaniola, then Haiti, Cuba. They frightened me because no information was to be had about them - no charts, no consulates, no one familiar with the way.”
Haiti is a tragicomedy of pretentious officials and aggressive very poor people. Ladd both loves and hates the country. People constantly try to shake him down. He’s overwhelmed by the poverty, the desperation, the garbage, the smells. He rests for several days in an ancient Port-au-Prince hotel before tackling the 55 mile passage to Cuba. He survives a scary nighttime crossing. Cuban officials are strict but polite. The country clean and green, the people poor but friendly, the opposite of Haiti. He sails along the sparsely populated coast, sometimes inside a protective reef. Most nights he spends tied up near coastal guard stations - everyone seems easier with the foreigner under surveillance.
Then forty two miles north to Sal Cay, and Squeak enters Bahamian waters. The officials are casual and friendly. Then the Florida Keys and finally Miami Beach. Ladd arranges a driveaway car to Portland, buys a small trailer, loads Squeak up and pulls into Bremerton on May 23, 1993 ending three years in a 12’ boat! How could one return to “normal” after such an adventure? I did see a magazine article recently about a new cruising trimaran Ladd is building, so return to normal . . ? Not likely.