Kayak Adventure at Big Pine Key and No Name Key

Patricia is patient with our fishing. I expect her to be resentful, but she never reveals any of that. Besides, I am so proud of her for choosing this vacation in 2007, when Old Wooden Bridge Cottages and Marina was Old Wooden Bridge Fish Camp. Imagine a wife who, on her own, unsolicited, does that for you. Finds a fish camp and says let's do this, even when she doesn't fish. On Ocracoke Island, she comes with us on the charter, and when we go to "the dock," she calls it, Avon Pier, she stays in the rental home and reads. She likes her quiet with Sadie the black Labrador. The last occasion  in 2012 at Old Wooden Bridge on Big Pine by the bridge over Bogie Channel to No Name Key, she spent time by and in the pool, while Matt and I boated and fished three days, although we've always taken her out on the boat for hours when we have fished inshore. She is utterly terrified at the thought of going out to sea. 

Matt and I pulled a stunt that second day out there this year, too, although I know I could have handled a little worse. 

After we finished the third day at 4 pm, we did no more fishing, but we were up for whatever Trish wanted to do Friday (Saturday we went to Key West), and discussed options, settling on kayaking. The literature about the service speaks of an eco-tour, and why is it I am uncomfortable with the description? Because it hits me as pretentious. Ecology is a science, or should be, and paddling in nature isn't an eco-tour, it is simply an exercise of the body involved in an exploration (of nature). It may also be described as an adventure, since danger is in fact involved, and this post will give you an example of suffering a very unfortunate accident. As my wife later remarked, such an accident is par for the course, when you take risks as we do.

We paddled from the Old Wooden Bridge establishment along the bridge to No Name across the channel, and then we turned under to the left, paddling along mangroves to find where the little tidal creek empties. We followed this flow, often by pulling on limbs, to a very shallow little bay, a distance of perhaps half a mile. We found mangrove snappers in the creek, some as large as eight or nine inches, and though the water was clear and I tried to photograph some, this wasn't quite successful. I got a few good shots of a black-crowned night heron that seemed quite unafraid of us, although I could have done better with my long 70-200mm lens. My 50mm prime lens was installed. I didn't bring my bag with other lenses, because attempting to reach backwards where I would have strapped the bag did not impress me as practical. My camera was secure around my neck. 

It was a nice paddle. We didn't see a whole lot of wildlife, but jellyfish and hermit crabs caught our interest in the little bay, as did some sort of land crab on limbs we grasped. 

When we got back, Matt had no trouble landing and getting out. My wife and I pointed our double kayak into shore. I noticed the water was deep where I continued sitting as Trish prepared to get out, while I ventured the thought that once she stood aside, Matt would pull the kayak forward so I could reasonably get out. 

What happened within seconds was a disaster to minor degree. Let me first insert an anecdote. In 2011, Matt and I swam in the steep surf of Point Pleasant, New Jersey, the water about 10 feet deep very few yards from shore, the two of us animated by a very good mood. We both called Trish forward. The waves were big. She doesn't even know how to swim, and we should have known better, but we had thrown care to the wind. 

What do you do when a big wave hits you? Let it take you. She resisted. Her right knee shattered. She had to be taken off the beach and to our car in an ATV, and then directly by me to Ocean County Hospital, I believe is the name of it. In Bedminster, she underwent surgery right away, but the knee has never been perfectly right since.

It buckled suddenly as she tried to stand, and she fell back on the edge of the kayak, tipping it. I went directly overboard into that deep water, my $3500.00 camera, and that 50mm lens, thoroughly submerged in salt water for about three seconds. 

I got out and went directly to our cottage to begin salvage efforts. I did find that the camera is amazingly waterproof. "For thirty-five-hundred-dollars, it should be," Trish said. Well, if only quality were just that secure. There was no water inside the lens chamber. No water in the battery chamber. But not only did some get into small portals, I put the camera in the sun, and that resulted in condensation on the LCD panel near the start button. Not a good sign at all. The memory card I knew was unaffected. All of my photos on it, all are spared. In a very real way, that is what is most important. 

Trish and I went to the Winn Dixie, and she asked for a small cardboard box, got one, and bought beef jerky with silicone packets, along with duct tape. Thus began efforts to get the water sucked out of the camera in an airtight box with silicone. I asked Matt to go on his laptop and order more silicone from Amazon Prime. When we came home, it was here for us. I put the camera in an airtight box with plenty of silicone packets for a week. The lens remains as yet in another. (That lens is sharp as can be and cost me only $80.00, an old model that used to be expensive.) 

I finally tried turning the camera on. It did not work. So I phoned Nikon USA, on Walt Whitman Road in Melville, New York. Two of the greatest literary figures in American history. I have always enjoyed dealing with Nikon service for this reason. It's costly, but what the hell. Melville was a popular adventure novelist who earned money by those books...until he wrote Moby Dick, and everyone believed he had gone mad. He finished his life as a low-wage clerk, but his was the glory. He wrote the great American novel. So what is money, anyway?

Apparently, and I do hedge, Nikon can repair my camera. The man on the phone was confident enough--maybe. This was salt water. I haven't heard back as yet. Shipping by UPS with insurance cost $71.00. I like my camera, but just between you and me, I was tempted to hope it gets lost. 

I suffer--on rare occasion--from persecution mania, which is neither paranoia nor the mania of manic-depression, but a most intensely negative state of feeling things have gone desperately wrong. It is a mania, which means the mind is agitated and unhinged, but again, it is not the ecstasy of mania in a manic state. Quite the contrary to those wonderful feelings. After the salvage effort was complete, I went into my room, shut the door, and suffered. Philosopher Bertrand Russel has written that the worst unhappiness possible to a human being is persecution mania. Why my psyche goes to the extreme is a mystery, but it does on rare occasion. 

What is money, I asked. Well, when I overheard Trish on the phone with the car rental agency, talking about instating Matt as a driver for $75.00 so they could go out, I got out of bed and called that off. I shot a look at Trish, and she seemed accepting of me. I hadn't behaved badly, but she knew I was in a bad way. Well, now I was going to be OK, if she would have it. Apparently so. Money to the rescue. Together, the three of us rode to No Name Key for a hike, which I enjoyed. We all did. Would you think after hell, an hour later this would be possible? It happened. The object of persecution had been how damn hard it was to have earned $3500.00 as a writer, but in reality, the situation was in play. 

Trish said, "You'll find a way to profit from this." After all, I certainly did profit from the submergence of my D60 and my favorite lens in the Salmon River. Not only did I place as a finalist for the Brookwood Press Writing Award by account of that loss, I was quickly prompted to buy my much better D7100. That advanced my work greatly.

I'm not saying I'll have to buy a new camera, but what was really the worst of what happened? The financial loss, or the plunge I took into my bad mental state? The latter never damaged me, but it does suck when it happens.     

Not as sharp as would be in the middle range of my 70-200mm lens. This is an image cropped out of a much larger frame. Besides, more focus is on that stick in front of the heron. I got other shots much better, which even when cropped, seem to have magazine quality.