Home

We decided to spend another day in Phoenix, NY. The weather forecast for the day isn't bad, just rain showers and wind five to ten. But rumor has it that Oswego is pretty well packed with boats waiting for a weather window to take on Lake Ontario. Tomorrow's forecast is good. Hopefully some of the Oswego boats will head out on the lake. If we wait until tomorrow to move, there is a good chance that there will be room for one more 42' boat when we get there. It is a plan from which to deviate.

I am looking forward to being in Oswego. For me it will mark a turning point on this trip. This first phase has felt like an uphill battle, getting the boat ready to go in the water followed by the seemingly relentless list of mechanical problems made for a real grind. It helped that the crew at the Delaware City Marina and fellow loopers were among the most helpful and friendly folks we have run across in all of our years on a boat. But there were still days where we just fought our way through because we didn't really have any other choice.

I'm hoping the next phase, from Oswego and into the US and Canadian parts of the Thousand Island area will feel like an even keel cruise. Once we cross the border back into the US I will feel like we are on the downhill run to home.

Home.

“Home” is a fuzzy concept for me, a wanderer. I left home at 19, newly married and with a job nearly half way across the continent. It was further west than I had ever been. After that were homes in Washington, PA, Kingman AZ, and St. Louis MO. But even with those “homes” family lore has it that any time I was in the same time zone for more than a couple of days I would get a nosebleed. Sometimes Deb would ask me when my next trip was leaving after having me wandering around the house for too many days, trying to stay busy. Somehow she knew it wasn't that I wanted to get away from anything. I just needed to be on the move. On days when there were no trips pending she would suggest I get on the motorcycle and put in a few hundred miles. “Home”, regardless of what kind of wandering I was doing, was where she and the girls would be waiting for my return.

The girls grew up and headed out on their own adventures. Deb and I moved onto Kintala. Everything we owned was on the boat. Where ever it was, was “home”. It didn't matter the country, open water, on anchor or tied to a dock. Of course we visited the girls, usually returning for a visit during some holiday or the other, and certainly to greet each of the new grandkids as they arrived. But we were visiting their “homes” and were away from ours.

The years of Kintala being “home” passed. We needed to refill the cruising kitty and had a good job offer back in St. Louis. We ended up staying for nearly 6 years. Kintala went up for sale while funds got stashed away. We settled into a two-room apartment above the garage with family, including six of our grandkids, living about 25 feet away. We decided not to buy motorcycles again; we were getting too old and the St. Louis drivers had gotten too crazy. But the wanderer wasn't quite finished. We bought First Light and got it ready for this trip. But this boat has never been “home” in the same sense that Kintala was. No matter where we venture in First Light, the final destination will always be St. Louis. And that is true in more ways than one.

Deb and I recently made arrangements for our after life resting place. It is a huge and beautiful garden with our selected spot (really) directly under the departure and arrival paths for airplanes flying into and out of the St. Louis International airport.

There is a poem written by Robert Louis Stevenson that best describes my feelings about “home”. It is in the public domain now, so I can share it with you.

Under the wide and starry sky,
    Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
    And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
    Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
    And the hunter home from the hill.