Sailing Keeps Us Humble - Lent 2016

I got to thinking about how sailing (and other boating experiences) tend to keep us humble. It doesn't take much to realize that every time we are out on the water, there is more to learn: we miss a tack; the wind dies just at a headland and a change of tide; or we read the weather wrong and find ourselves shorting sail. I find that while sailing keeps me humble, it is also the challenge that keeps me interested. The challenge, and the fact that I'm absorbed in Nature - in God's First Book.

So, when my issue of the Jan/Feb WoodenBoat showed up, I was excited to see that two great sailors on a famous ship have written a book. Matthew P. Murphey reviews Thies Matzen and Kicki Ericson's Antarktische Wilnis: Sudgeorgien (Marevelag GmbH & Co, 2014 - See WoodenBoat, Jan/Feb 2016 (Issue #248) p. 82-3). If you are not familiar with Matzen and Ericson, they bought Wanderer III (of the Hiscock fame) have been sailing her all over the place. The book is about their two year stay on South Georgia told through photographs and lyrical captions.

What struck me about this in particular was the following quote on page 77 of the book accompanying a photograph of a pair of Arctic terns (it must have caught Murphy, too, because he pointed it out):

We saw maybe 200 or 300 of the 130,000 Antarctic terns that exist worldwide. Maybe seven of the 400,000 leopard seals, one of the 2,000 blue whales, 80 of the striated caracaras - every animal that we meet is a specimen of its species that exist in the thousands, hundreds of thousands, more rarely in the millions. They are relatively small groups. All the king penguins of the world, maybe 1.5 million, would fill Copenhagen or Hamburg. ... I don't actually know what I want to say. But in comparison the seven billion individuals of the species Homo sapiens 130,000 terns seems vanishingly few. ... But humans live globally, everywhere, in every habitat, whereas these terns only in this one.

I found that it suddenly put some things into perspective. How precious are these other creatures with which we share this home (our planet)? And how marvelous is this First Grand Book of Scripture - the natural world.

As I was preparing to write, I also came across this which I found interesting, especially in light of the recent excitement about gravity.

Blessed Be,
Joel

PS - here are some other photos from googling the book title - enjoy. And here is a book review in German with more photos.