Hunting Island, SC
This morning, walking along the beach I saw some dolphins. My first thought was “shark,” because I just saw just the fin, and that’s what Jaws did to me, but then I saw the curved, smooth back. As I walked along, he’d surface every 25 feet or so, and I’d try to keep pace. After a while he went wild for a bit, slapping the water with his tail, and I thought maybe he was in trouble, or came in too shallow and was getting stuck, because he was only 40 feet out. But I think he was calling over a lady friend, because pretty soon there were two of them. I’ve never met a dolphin, but I guess they’re smart and friendly. At least, that’s what Flipper taught me.
I went on a solid bike ride today, up the highway near the bridge to the bordering Fripp Island. Just before the bridge is one of the longest fishing piers in South Carolina. I talked to a guy fishing the pier who was trying to catch sheepshead. “You ever seen one?” he asked me. “They have teeth like humans.” And so they do, which made me really not want to catch one, although they’re evidently good eating. We talked a little and it turned out he was an avid outdoorsman, the hunting/fishing kind, and I’m pretty sure he knew more about fishing in Minnesota than I did. He said Pelican Lake in Minnesota is home to monster bluegills, and he’d been to Ely, MN, to fish and to hunt moose and possibly rabbit, I think he said, which can’t possibly be right, but he seemed a little off, so maybe.
Later, I fished the beach and didn’t catch anything again. A jovial, talkative old guy walked down and chatted me up—he was from Michigan. He had fished all over the country and loved salmon and walleye the best. He’d caught a 150 pound shark off Marco Island. Every once in a while he’d involuntarily stiffen and grunt in obvious pain, and he apologized after one episode and muttered “back pain.”
Last spring, as I was getting excited to start doing some stone work in the nice weather, I had some kind of a nerve issue in my body. I think it was from lifting weights too hard, trying to be 21 and strong again. It was the most debilitating, depressing thing I’ve dealt with in quite a while. It just immobilized me for more than two months, and it hurt to sit, and to stand, and to move. To sit on the couch I would just line up near it and tip myself over. People who live and manage chronic pain like that deserve a goddamn medal.
The jovial old guy continued telling me fishing stories, me getting physically smaller and smaller with each one. All my fishing stories are about failure. But also, persistence in that failure. He told me a story about a friend who’d fought a tarpon for 5 hours, and eventually he gave up and cut the line, unable to reel him in. I don’t know how you could possibly give up catching a fish. First, I’m not good at fishing, I’ll admit it. So if I get something on the line, I’m not giving up. Second, had his friend not read The Old Man and the Sea? You do not give up. You don’t. But then Hemingway blew his own head off, so what the hell. The thing is, at that point in his life he was in chronic mental and physical pain, which can, of course, change your perspective.
Later on my bike ride, I talked to a park ranger who said she loved my last name, Overland. She said she was a genealogist. I told her a stupid origin story that I won’t repeat, as well as some of the ways in which my friends have used my name to make fun of me over the years. My friend Joel, for example, will often just add “land” to about anything, and call me that. It’s actually how I arrived at calling this blog “Adam Camperland,” which Joel called me after I told him I was going to travel around in a camper.
I believe I’ve lost a not insignificant amount of weight on this trip, but I don’t have a scale to prove it, so that’s a post for another time.
Leave a comment