2,500 miles later

I've been back in the Swan Valley for a little over a week now, having parked the boat in Pasadena, Maryland and prepared it for sale. Naturally, the boat market has completely tanked, with everyone trying to get rid of that impulse-buy boat from the pandemic. We have the preternatural ability to find the bottom of any market when we have something to sell.

Our quick response unit in Condon had six medical calls the first four days I was back. The members suggested that I take my black cloud back to Maryland and polish the boat a little more. It's been a busy summer for both the Seeley and Swan units, so thank those volunteers by remembering that you are not just as good a driver after a few drinks. After driving our boat around Florida I assumed they were all hammered.

I've been trying to collect my impressions after seven months and 2,500 miles cruising from Key West to Quebec and back to the Chesapeake. Like many powerful experiences, feelings are complex.

It was not a vacation. Divining the weather, navigating, sweating shallow water, sweating big water, docking, undocking, trying to sleep on what felt like a mechanical bull during a storm - those things aren't typical of a trip to the beach.

But after a 40-year surgical career, I wasn't ready for a recliner and a margarita. This was an engaging experience that provided a transition from one challenging role to another, albeit without the potential, hopefully, of bumping anyone off.

How stirring it is to sit in the cool silence of a St. Augustine church over 400 years old. Sitting on a dock in rural Georgia, the air almost liquid, the setting orange sun electrifying the vast grasslands, a big 'ol gator gliding by with a conspiratorial wink. Having ice cream on a cobblestone street in Quebec City, a once English possession where everyone speaks French. Nighttime in a marina directly opposite the Freedom Tower, where the Twin Towers once stood. On the ocean, in sight of nothing but water.

So much history, so much of it war. After three historic forts, we had no desire to see more. Some cities and towns were blown apart in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Civil War. Sometimes the tour guides made these conflicts sound like the Rams playing the 49ers and I thought of thousands of 18-year-olds whose lives lay incomplete. The canals through New York and Canada that made our journey so interesting were built for war. While I found all the war history sobering, I felt so grateful that I live in a place that isn't bombed, burned, or strafed.

Many people make the same trip, "The Great Loop," and it is a social bunch, much like you'd find in a campground. Almost all helpful, kind folks who are about the same vintage, recently retired and quite unconcerned about money or status. No one talked about their jobs, but rather about water pumps and holding tanks and ill-tempered alternators. And the weather. You would throw all your food and your spouse overboard before discarding your weather apps.

People raved about Florida, the Chesapeake Bay, the Hudson River, the canal waterways and the Great Lakes. We nodded agreeably, and we went to all those places and they were interesting. But you can't describe to others the beauty and majesty of this area - the verdant forests, towering snow-capped mountains, crystalline blue lakes and an 80-mile drive to any airport with one stop sign. Why tens of millions of people live in areas with eight lanes of gridlock traffic, stifling humidity, featureless landscape - all enveloped in a perpetual brown haze - baffles me, but I'm glad they do. We'll deal with the grizzlies.

When I had much less time to devote to internet news and spent most of my time out meeting and talking to people, I realized that doom and gloom clickbait didn't resonate with my experience. I saw a bustling economy, aided by hustling immigrants holding two or three mostly dirty jobs. I saw much more kindness than polarization.

A great experience, but good to be home. Public restrooms, apparently also patronized by farm animals, lose their charm. I'm sure my wife, Pam, has thoughts about living together for seven months in 300 square feet, but we've agreed not to share them, especially the docking parts.

The next boating adventure will be Alaska. For now, it is cleaning up after a windstorm like many of you. I checked, and the waves will be less than two feet.