Face the Wolf

Jerry Nissley

“I scarcely know where to begin…”: The opening line in Jack London’s, Sea-Wolf. This 1904 story develops around a self-indulged, self-professed gentleman of the times, Humphrey van Weyden, who decides to visit a relative across the bay. The fateful day he boards the ferry from Sausalito to San Francisco, the bay is shrouded in dense, preternatural fog. So much so that boats could only navigate using compass, speed, and distance –“a mathematical certainty“, right? Ergo the inevitable transpires–in spite of, or perhaps because of, the cacophony of navigational bell buoys and ship’s fog horns, the ferry is suddenly struck amidships by a steam schooner crawling in against the tide.

Chaos prevails and young Humphrey barely has time to secure his life jacket before he jumps/falls from the fast sinking ferry into the frigid waters of the bay. Hypothermia is a cruel, uncaring beast, and the weak, water-logged human bobber is quickly carried towards the Golden Gate by fast-moving current caused by the ebbing tide. Despair and hopelessness lead to delirium and unconsciousness; yet at the last possible moment Humphrey is plucked from the water by a passing sealing schooner, the Ghost, on its way to Japan. The Ghost’s intractable captain, Wolf Larsen, does not return Humphrey to shore but instead indentures him for the duration of the voyage.

I love classical symbolism. I recalled that story while I was on a four-hour kayak trip the Monday before our current executive order to lock-down. To me the opening scene in Sea-Wolf is analogous to the Corona-virus situation we are in today. Our carefree lives have been hit amidships by a runaway schooner-virus; knocked into treacherous waters and after floundering for a time, we now find ourselves confined to our boat-houses under incommodious restrictions. Are we all now symbolically Humphrey van Weyden indentured by a viral personification of Wolf Larsen? Will we all be better versions of ourselves once we endure this indentured servitude?

I scarcely know how to continue… for alas, I did not sit down to write specifically about Humphrey van Weyden or Wolf Larsen. I sat down to write about how through all of the prevailing current events, spring continues to flourish and how I am encouraged by Nature’s example of fortitude. An example worth emulating. 

Prior to restrictions, I was able to visit both Huntley Meadows Park (HMP) and Mason Neck State Park (MNSP) several times as a volunteer and as a casual visitor/user. At HMP I observed the hoodies and the woodies, the pins and the shovelers, the muskrats, osprey, snake-heads, spotted salamanders, assorted reptiles and migrating birds continue the cycle of life directly up in the face of the “Wolf“. 

Kayaking at Mason Neck State Park, I observed that emergent vegetation is starting to show through the mud in Kane’s Creek. Spatterdock, cattails, pickerel weed and swamp mallow are starting to form along the water’s edge. Hopefully kayak tours will start up again in the summer months. Whether that happens or not, osprey, eagles, red winged blackbirds and beaver continue nesting/lodging rituals as if they plan to stay another year. I floated up to copious painted turtles adorning the logs like jewels, soaking in vitamin D. In the coves I sensed the sibilant swirl of pre-spawn fish around fallen trees in search of food and nesting sites. They, too, are planning to stay for the year.

Oh yes indeed — our kindred spirits, Flora and Fauna, embrace us. They show us there is a great deal of beauty and emerging hope all around. Perhaps we need to use our God-given senses to discern this — hear and distinguish the cries and calls, taste the Coral honeysuckle, smell the Sweetspire, see and perceive changing patterns, touch the morning mist. We need to be smart, stay safe and get through our “indentured servitude”. Our short-term restrictions do not even compare to Mr. van Weyden’s protracted ordeal and he, “… discovered his own legs and learned to stand on them“.

As a closing solicitude, consider Mr. van Weyden’s own contemplation as the crew emerged from a particularly trying ordeal at sea, “One thing I was beginning to feel, and that was I could never again be quite the same man I had been. While my hope and faith in human life still survived Wolf Larsen’s destructive criticism, he had nevertheless been the cause of change in minor matters. I had learned to look more closely at life as it was lived… to emerge from the realm of mind and idea and to place certain values on the concrete and objective phases of existence.“