With Friends Like These..., N. Barry Carver [distant reading .txt] 📗

It was a crazy idea.

Everyone told me that. I barely knew my port from my pepper mill, and yet, I was determined to sail, alone, from Seattle to Hawaii. For all I knew, I was in the Atlantic. Tonight I’m your host – and a B-list celebrity chef... but scratch the surface and you’ll find just a glorified cook – certainly not a sea captain!

Push came to shove 19 days into my 12-day plan. With my rations gone, I decided to beach, unexpectedly, on a nearly submerged reef that I named “Broken Glass” for the feeling one gets from trying to walk on its sharp and shiny surface.

Reinforcing my nearly useless deck shoes with some macramé potholders secured with dots of a caramel sauce I could no longer risk my dental work to chew, I was able to “explore” the 3-mile wide expanse of wet coral. There were some bumps there, which I named “Larry”, “Moe” and “Dewey,” that will have to pass for the island’s landscape. Moe was the tallest rise, pushing its black mop-top up above the sharp white shells to an elevation, as near I could measure it, of maybe two-feet. He towered over the sandy-topped Larry, who leaned away as if being accosted. Dewey was near the eastern edge, with a wide bill acting like a sort of scoop, holding a bit from each wave as if examining or tasting it. From the peak of Moe, I could make out what looked to be an actual island to, what I considered to be, the south.

As the sun set, giving me a reference, I had to concede that it was northeast – about a day’s swim. There were no fish, no plants and, as for my emergency drinking rations… well, let’s just say that one’s natural ability to process water isn’t as thirst quenching as it needs to be.

I bound the floaty stuff together – which did not include the perforated hull of my boat – and shepherded it all toward my new residence. I reached sand just as the moon set, and dragged it all to my target – a clump of trees on the south end of the island that would be my home for the next twenty-odd days.

The island turned out to be only thirty feet wide but luckily for me, grasses and trees had caught hold there. In the middle of the island a small, incredibly hot, stream vent trickled. The water reeked of iron and sulfur but, when cooled, proved drinkable. One of the trees, it turned out, bore something like a fig, and while less than ripe, when cooked over the vent that gave the stinky water, it made a wondrous breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Then, after many, many tries – I speared a fish! It was the most delicious steamed collection of bones and cartilage that was ever served under a fig and sweet-leaf chutney, I assure you. Beneath the lean-to shelter I had patched together, the only friend I made in the whole adventure joined me: a large, oddly fat tortoise, whom I named “Boris.” I don’t know why, it just seemed to suit him. Boris The Tortoise. We met the evening of my third day on the island, as I dozed and he attempted to make a meal out of the toe of my sock… whilst it housed my foot. I forgave him straight away and offered him a couple of fish heads I was hoping I wouldn’t be forced to eat.

Boris climbed down the short beach and swam out of site in the morning but, by midday, was back by my side, enjoying some rind and remains of my noon meal. This went on for about a week.

I found a hive of some sort of long bug behind a mask of sticky ferns, and being unsure of how much I could continue to count on my little fishing spot, I grabbed up a few of them and steamed them in a little sort of basket I’d made. With a bit of a wince, I found them gritty but sweet, once pried from their hard, segmented shell. I thought I’d found a supplement to my diet but had instead discovered my recreation (and addiction) for the entire stay. The boiled bugs were narcotic.

As things became a bit direr, after a slow two weeks on the island, I had to stop feeding Boris. He took it all in stride and, now and then, brought in some completely unsavory flotsam, which he must have thought of as helpfully adding to the food supply.

One night, after a very large dose of my bug drug (a phrase I truly thought quite clever at the time), I awoke in the middle of the night to find that Boris had lopped off a bit of my index finger and was crunching down the remains while I shot blood across his face and back.

After doing my best to stop the bleeding and bandage the wound with cloth, hopefully made sterile in the super hot water, I yelled for a good ten minutes at my prehistoric playmate – convinced I could get him to comprehend that I was not on the menu, or at least, to make him understand the word “no.”

After a few more bugs, Boris lazily answered my tirade with, “Sorry.”

I looked at his beak and rubbed my eyes. “You can talk!?” I screamed, washing down the last of my bugs with some water, which hadn’t yet cooled to drinking temperature. The comical spray of an unrehearsed spit-take had us both laughing long and hard.

We had a long chat, and I adjudged him genuinely sorry for having caused me pain, which he promised never to do again. I told him about winters in Seattle and how I’d left just before the rains could start in earnest. He, being surprisingly eloquent – even if quite limited in his vocabulary – convinced me never to winter there again. His observations are truly the reason I’ve made the switch to stateside summers and spending the “dark season” – as Boris had called it – in the islands.

I was informed just before I came out this evening that, today, the twenty-first of January, it is thirty-three degrees at my Puget Sound balcony. Since the beads of condensation on your wine glasses indicate that it’s a bit warmer here, overlooking the sunset on our new green-bamboo patio, I’ll again tip my hat to his wisdom for advice that surely saved me from a frosty death.

Near dawn of that very same day, with still a bit of a buzz on, I sat with Boris and saw a foul streak, which had magically appeared while we were engaged, to show a way across the sea. It was a mixture of motor oil, sewage and table scraps – which practically glowed in the orange light of the setting moon. This lifted my spirits tremendously as the store of fish near the island had run dry completely.

I told Boris that the effluent meant that we must be near a shipping lane and that, since they were dumping their waste, they were very likely coming into a port. The leftovers of my boat, which I puzzled together with bits of vine and log-parts from the island, would be more than capable of allowing me to follow the stench trail to civilization.

Boris, after offering to fetch some of the offal from the refuse, said he would be sorry to see me go. After a final go at the last of the island’s bugs, I asked him why he’d been such a loyal companion – even after I’d stopped feeding him. He replied that, I had been nice enough, and he assumed, I’d die there – offering him a real feast when I could no longer complain about hosting it.

In the brightness of the morning I made the raft ready, and failing to bring in any fish, Boris and I made some difficult decisions. I then sat down to a substantial breakfast. Fortified, I set out on my journey, followed the greasy slick here to the shore of Kauai and was, as you see, saved.

The dish I’ve prepared for you on this first anniversary of that evening is called, in the native language, “Ho’alohaloha Honu ‘Aina ahiahi.” It’s a variation on the meal that strengthened me for my trek back to civilization and includes a mix of fresh steamed figs.

The name roughly translates to “The Friendly Tortoise Meal” – it is served tonight from Boris’ shell which, being quite large and emptied, I managed to bring back with me.

Bon appétit!

Text: © 2011 NBC
Publication Date: 12-12-2011

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