The Thrill and Terror of it All

Oh how the storm is raging: outside. I am safe: inside. The wind makes sound but can’t even rattle the windows. I’m excited by the storm yet uneasy at feeling so very protected. I have always loved a good storm. Well, almost always. Listening to the wild wind I remember vividly, when the terror, for a while, outweighed the thrill of the storm.

I had headed out alone on my bicycle: leaving mid-west college life in hopes of finding a home that resonated more deeply with the home I was finding inside myself. That same longing continued to guide me through the next two years to the moment when I was FINALLY on MY boat.

I had spent the last several months scrounging wood from old chicken coops and long abandoned moss covered shacks along the river. I’d gathered shingles from a rickety old barn out Willits Road, found windows at the dump and 55 gallon drums down at the harbor; $2 a piece. Since I couldn’t actually build it on the river, I developed a design that broke the 8x16 foot cabin into sections; 5 on each side and two at each end so I could build it up at Salmon Creek Farm, a commune on the ridge. I was determined to do it all myself. Which I did, till finally the big day came.

I picked a sunny day, though it was in the middle of January, 1974. My friend came with his flatbed. My communal family and other friends helped me load the sections onto the truck and we paraded down to the river. Like a barn raising, the first day we bolted the floor sections together and arranged the barrels underneath. We added a layer of plastic and then laid on more boards going perpendicular to add strength and protection from the water below.

The next day my friends and I returned. We bolted the wall sections together and laid the roof rafters in place. I felt so proud of all I had accomplished. And I was beyond grateful to have friends to help when I needed it. It was really cold when I went back down alone the next day. I put the roof boards on. No tar paper yet and no windows, but I couldn’t wait! I slept that first night on MY boat!

It snowed.

It NEVER snows on the Northern California Coast. I lived there nine years. That is the ONLY time I ever saw snow. But there it was. I was freezing when I finally stumbled my way back to the commune that morning.

The next two weeks I put in the windows and made the loft. The ladder to the loft was a beautiful twisted driftwood log. I had welded the stove from a 15 gallon oil drum. With the windows in and the stove installed I was finally able to work in warmth. I made a desk, counters, a sink, even curtains. And I acquired a tiny gray kitten. From an abandoned warehouse down river I gathered dishes, pots and pans. Everything about this boat was scrounged. I only bought new: the tar paper and roofing, nails and bolts, rope for the anchors and to tie it to the shore, and one piece of molding so a window could slide.

I was in love with my new home! I discovered where to find water, watercress, nettles, and firewood. Friends from another commune up the road leant me their rowboat.

Two weeks after moving fully onto the boat, the wind hit so hard the whole house tilted and I scrambled to make sure I was seeing the same scenery and not on my way out to the ocean. The wind continued to hit as I reassured myself, ”This just feels big because I am on the boat. It’s just a rain storm.” I gazed up at the huge oak growing at an angle right over the houseboat. It looked precarious. I calmed myself by telling the kitten, “That tree has been there a long time. It will be there another long time. Remember, this just feels big cause we’re on the river.” Morning FINALLY came; muscles sore from hours of tension.

Once I assed damages, I realized gratefully that Eric really had known what he was doing when he had helped me tie up the boat, so the boat had weathered the storm well. My friend and inspiration for this adventure was known around town as Houseboat Eric. A quiet gentle spirit who had lived on his boat in simple harmony with the river for 15 years. It was staying on his boat where I had fallen in love with river life and decided to build my own.

I generally got to shore from the boat on a 2x8 plank tied to the boat and to a tree on shore. At high tide the boat would float and at low tide it would sit on the mud. Either way, I needed a plank straight from the boat to the shore. Amazingly, my plank, though caddywampus, had not floated away and I was able to set it straight enough to grab the kitten and abandoned ship. Significantly traumatized, I turned to look back at the boat, ironically named “NO WAKE” (a sign I had found along the shore.) I put the kitty on shore and retreated to the solid ground of Salmon Creek Farm.

I came back several hours later with Orion, a friend from the ridge, who had welded the anchor for me. We came to string a couple more lines to secure it a bit better. According to the tide table that I now carried with me always and had begun to rule the timing of my days, it was low tide. Along one side of the boat was a low area where salt water succulents grew. This was a place I might get my feet wet at high tide. I was stunned seeing that the water there now was practically neck deep. This WAS no ordinary storm. Turned out that night’s storm had brought the biggest flood in 10 years.

Snow and floods had welcomed me to life on the river. Though I felt both energized and terrified, I still found it was years before I could feel the elation I used to feel as a child when the winds whipped so hard I could lean into the wind and be completely supported. Or when the rains came and we played in the puddle created by a humongous tree’s roots that raised up the school playground, making a puddle deep enough to lie down and splash in.

Eventually, it was time to move away from the fishing village at the mouth by the ocean, to the lagoon ,a 45 minute row up river. Eric came to help me and together we prepared to take the boat upstream. The day before the journey upriver we had to move her out into the channel at high tide so she would be able to start moving up river when the tide was at its lowest. With no motor and only a row boat for emergency pulling, the boat had to be propelled by the tide and steered with long poles. We tied the boat to the cement pilings of the old bridge, long ago abandoned for the new bridge high above the river. We rowed to shore and each went off on various errands. We met back at the boat at low tide.

Even from shore it became clear something was amiss. As the tide went down, the edge of the roof had caught on the top of the piling. The boat continued to lower with the tide, but the roof stayed on top of the piling creating a gap between wall and roof of a couple feet. As the boat was jammed up close to the piling, I was only able to slip through the door sideways, and my backpack had to be thrown in ahead of me. As I threw it, out fell my wallet with my last $30 in the world.

Eric and I both caught our breath, looked each other in the eye and began to laugh. Albeit a bit of a hysterical kind of laugh, still a needed deep belly of laugh. Tension released, I slipped into the boat, Eric came after and we waited till the tide rose enough to dislodge the boat and head up the channel.

I felt like Tom Sayer as we polled our way up river. Soon we were past the docks and fishing boats and entering the world of the great blue herons fishing on the banks and hawks swooping above. The plan was to get to a lagoon made ages ago by the early loggers. The lagoon, however, was too shallow for the boat to get in, so we tied up just outside it and set my plank up onto the dividing bank. Eric, with his river wisdom, helped me again to tie and anchor in just the right way to be able to go up and down with the tide and to handle any future floods.

Then it was just me. Me, the boat, the herons, the hawks, gray kitty and the water. No one else around. Ever. I felt like I had died and gone to heaven. This was the home I had dreamed of and it nourished me inside and out. I found a spring to get my water. The tidal river was ocean cold but still I could dive in. I gathered firewood, and forest greens, brought groceries with the rowboat, wandered though the woods, did yoga on the bank and lots of journaling.

The next storm was big and really scary. My nerves were now doubly jangled. Still, I felt proud of myself weathering it out alone. When it was over I laid out on the bank in the returning sun. After a couple days it was time to gather supplies. I took the rowboat down river, always traveling in sync with the tides.

I rowed past the place I had been tied up before. My heart stopped and my arms froze! That huge oak tree; the one I had worried about, the one I had told myself not to worry about, the one I had reassured myself would be there for another long time… that tree… was down! Down right where my boat had once been. My heart and mind raced: if I hadn’t moved up river when I did… if it had gone down that first storm…. Slowly I rowed on as my terror eased into incredible gratitude.

I loved my life on the boat. I loved the hard work and the challenges it took to live on the boat through the seasons. My agitated nervous system from storms was more than soothed by the deeply peaceful life and the intimacy with the River and the Trees, the Herons and the Otters.

Eric lived on his boat almost 40 years. But I am more gregarious than he and it only took just over a year for me to show up to a family meeting at Salmon Creek Farm and ask to be allowed to return to land and become a member of the commune. Salmon Creek Farm had a shared gathering place, kitchen, barn and garden. But each person, even the young kids, with help, built their own houses speckled throughout the 20 acres.

I had learned many things about myself during my journey with the boat. One thing I learned is I love to work with my hards and build things!!! I finally found a just right house site, A burned out stump big enough to live in. The stump was left over from the days, a hundred years ago, when men had stood before these magnificent majestic redwoods bigger and older than anything they had ever seen, and and had the shockingly small minded thought…. “hmmm. lots of board feet in there”, and proceeded to rip their flesh and brought these sacred beings down with a thunder and crash we can only imagine here in the days of second and third growth forests.

The house was a creative design as I wove it in and around and over the stump. I perched the bed on top of the stump. Above the bed was to be a skylight so I could lie there, nourished from below by the ancient redwood tree and gaze up though the skylight to the night sky. A great romantic idea but I could never quite figure out how to make that skylight work.

So, when another quite memorable storm arrived, there was only a stapled piece of plastic above my bed. The rain gushed and winds were howling and whipping the next generation of redwoods throughout the night. I was thrilled to be so intimately close and connected to the wild elements and yet, with a nervous system that still remembered storms on the boat, I alternately recoiled before their power as well as the growing puddle as I curled up on my bed’s one dry corner under the leaking unfinished skylight above.

Ecstasy and terror both surged through my body when the entire sky lit up at the exact same moment that the thunder shook every cell in my body. Stunned but unhurt I continued to watch the sky’s light show through the night and kept an eye on the growing puddle which was my bed.

The mornings blue sky felt so incongruous to the night before. After laying out my bed to dry I checked on the others on the land. Everyone was ok. I heard the Hamm’s brothers, those 87 and 91 yr old anarchists across the field, saw their phone fly right off the wall.

I wandered a short ways down the road, thinking I might stop and see how they were doing. I reached the corner near their home and froze in place. I could almost feel the lightening of the night before still in my body as I gazed at what used to be the 4 story high scorched redwood snag, also left over from the defiling days. What I saw before me now was only about a story and a half; the rest of the majestic snag was now shattered and splayed across the field, victim of the lightning.

Life has a way of moving on even if parts of ourselves long to stay. The years took me far from the river and far from communal life in the redwoods. Long after moving far away, I was back for a visit to Salmon Creek Farm. I noticed many of those shattered pieces still lay where the lightening had thrown them. While remembering that night so vividly, I gathered. I tend to gather and this wood was especially precious to the me, living as I did now in the city of Sacramento several hours away.

I carried the sacred pieces home determined to honor them. I made a valiant attempt at making an inside tipi. I gathered and stripped poles and bought canvas and did my best to create a sacred space for healing in the garage apartment behind our city house. I arranged driftwood from the ocean and the snag remnants into a sacred altar: seeking to anchor for myself the me I knew myself to be, back on the river, at the commune: seeking every way I could find to make my city life sacred and connected to the natural world I had learned to love and turn to for healing.

Even now, almost 50 years latter, I still feel my heart warmed with gratitude for those days and that life. When the storms come, even the floods, I weep to find myself so unaffected; entirely too safe. The wind blows and my windows don’t even rattle. I miss the thrill and the terror of it all.