Loving the Log From The Sea Of Cortez

If you were to ask me about a time when I felt most free, most human, I would say it was the two weeks I spent as a school chaperone on the Denis Sullivan, the research schooner that sails out of Discovery World and takes students on educational tours around various bodies of water.  On our trip, we spent two weeks sailing through the Bahamas, stopping at two research stations and learning the tricks of navigating a sailing ship.  I loved it.  I loved every minute of it, every minute of standing watch at 3 am, every storm-filled, student-vomiting, sunburnt minute of the trip, for never have I been so engaged in my environment, being and absorbing rather than thinking and anticipating.  It was wonderful.
That's Steinbeck on this research trip with the marine biologist Ed Ricketts and the crew of their charter in Log From the Sea of Cortez.  If you've only read the Mice and Men or Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck, you haven't even begun to tap into the beauty of Steinbeck's language that flavors his non-fiction writing.  In Log, Steinbeck (NOT a marine biologist) goes on what he simply describes as "an adventure", a quest after knowledge that he may never use and that may or may not benefit anyone else, but for him, it is the knowing and finding that matters.  I get this.  There are times when you simply want to know, to encounter, to expand and to embrace, not for any precisely calculated end, but just because you can.  It makes you alive, part of the mystery, part of the game, part of the organism that is this planet.  He seems so happy, even when things are not working out as planned...because things are working themselves out, and part of the joy is watching how that happens.  I would like to do that more often...step away from my life, and in doing so, actually live.