Bar Harbor or bust — the voyage of Heron, Part III

This is the final part of a three-part series chronicling the journey by Bogart Salzberg from Portland to Mount Desert Island, a challenge inspired by is diagnosis with terminal brain cancer.

“High winds and seas today, worse tomorrow.”

I heard the weather report, but I wasn’t listening. My mind was made up. I was setting out from Stonington on the last leg of my voyage: Bar Harbor or bust.

Facing a diagnosis of terminal brain cancer, I yearned to prove myself equal to this test of strength and will. Yet the meaning of such success was corrupted by the fate which seemed certain to follow: a slow decline into brain death.

“I’ll do it today or die trying,” I thought.

Resting in the calm warm sunlight of Ship Harbor at four in the afternoon, counting a dozen miles done already, I churned inside with brazen confidence and a dread of fear.

With the crossing of Blue Hill Bay behind me, I could follow the shore of Mount Desert Island all the way to Bar Harbor. But it’s a big island. I found myself, at nightfall, still fighting the worsening seas along the barren southern cliffs. I knew then that I had fooled myself, that I plied those unnumbered miles not with confidence but with contempt for my own life.

From the starboard six-foot waves lifted me, dropped me, turned me and crashed over the deck. They bounced off the cliffs, came back, overlapped and welled up in unpredictable heaps.

For hours I slapped the waves and they threw me back, as the dusk drained to a moonless dark. Suddenly I was lifted up from the port rear as I finished a portside stroke. The kayak slid sideways down the face of a wave. I knew I was going to capsize. I knew I would need to right myself with an Eskimo roll, and that I could.

I had practiced it countless times. But I was suddenly blind and disoriented in the black water. I felt the paddle in my hands but I couldn’t see its position. I was lost without vision. My calmness evaporated. I needed air. Without even trying to roll, I pulled my spray skirt and bobbed to the surface, stunned by my failure.

“Don’t panic,” I said to myself. “Think. Priorities.”

I found myself holding both the paddle and the kayak. Some instincts still served me, but it wasn’t much consolation. The water was relatively warm in September, but I would be chilled in minutes. “Get out of the water, or you will die.”

I flipped the kayak right-side-up, straddled the stern and inched forward toward the cockpit. Waves broke over the side and water sloshed in the cockpit, unbalancing the hull and turning it over. I flipped it, again, then failed once more.

I finally dropped into the cockpit when it was full and low, and more stable. I was half out of the water, but sitting in a cool bath: an improvement, but not a solution. I pumped furiously with my hand pump, but the waves poured in. With exhausting effort, I turned the swamped kayak to face the shore.

A part of me wished to paddle on, however slowly, hating myself. “I must land,” I thought. “I want to live. I want to see my wife and son again.” I felt it clearly then: I decided to live.

The sea, of course, ignored my change of heart. I was struck by the terrifying thought that I would die. I suddenly understood how a good swimmer could be worn down, beaten, rolled over and choked. And drowned.

I scanned the shore slowly for bursts of subtle paleness signaling spray and troubled water. About 50 yards away, I found a void. I pulled a small flashlight from my lifejacket and spied a ledge shielding a pocket of water, leading up to a slope of rock. Despite some protection, the pocket flooded and ebbed with a powerful force. I would need to land on foot.

I jumped out of the kayak, grabbed the bow handle and kicked to shore. My feet touched the bottom. I leaned into the rock and probed for a hold. One hand and one step would do it, but it was slick and smooth.

The next receding wave yanked the kayak out of my hand. I struggled to stay upright. The closer I came to safety, the more desperately I wanted it. Again, I thought I might die there, how simple and easy it was.

Then, suddenly, my foot gained a hold and my hand found another. I scrambled up the rock and out of the surf. Even then I felt the water reaching. I stumbled stiffly, frantically forward.

I sat with my legs pulled up to my heaving chest. The ocean seethed. I was exhausted, but knew I had to move. Taking stock, I found a pocket of my lifejacket unzipped. My phone and my flashlight were gone. I pulled the VHF marine radio from the other pocket, but it was no use calling for help. I didn’t know where I was.

My feet stung sharply from barnacle cuts. I lost my shoes. I hobbled over broken rocks to the black woods above, where I found a shore trail. I swept it with the faint glow of the radio’s backlight, from side to side, seeing just enough to keep me on the trail.

I walked for an hour, maybe two, perhaps in circles, straining to see evidence of intersections. Finally I noticed a faint paleness on my right, easy to miss: an empty parking lot at the end of an empty road.

I lost all traces of will. I was simply an object in motion. After half a mile, I saw a small truck pull up to a stop sign. I knew I must ask for help.

I entered the glare of the headlights, barefoot and bloody, and waved my arms. The truck edged into the intersection. The driver asked if I was OK.

“Well, I was sort of shipwrecked,” I said. It sounded strange, like idle conversation. The urgency of the situation seemed self-evident, but the truck inched forward.

“So, you’re OK then?” the driver asked. The truck continued to turn away.

“Well, no,” I said, with audible urgency.

“You can ride in the back,” he said finally.

In town I find the house of a friend. She answers her door squinting, incredulous. I blurt out my story and surprise myself by concluding, with some emotion, “I almost died.”

I’m still likely to suffer and certain to die, but in choosing to live I’ve pledged to do so without regret.

Editor’s note: Since his journey, which began in mid-August of last year and continued in early September, Bogart reports being in good health.

“I have not had a recurrence of my cancer yet. It’s been over two years since my diagnosis and surgery. I have now outlived my original prognosis by a year. I feel that my health is, overall, quite good. My cholesterol is too high, though!

“I am currently working as a registered Maine Guide for sea kayaking. I just got my guide license in June and have led many tours for Portland Paddle and Maine Island Kayak Company.

“I recovered my kayak from the location where I had abandoned it under duress” on Mount Desert Island. “Fortunately the winds and waves and tides hadn’t moved it far overnight. It was deeply scratched, completely flooded and hung up on a large boulder, bent over backward at the cockpit. I still use it! Miracle of modern plastics!”

His blog is at: http://mybraincancerdiary.com