Why I Write
ood writing does not come
easily for me. Often it doesn’t come at
all. The act of writing is taxing,
almost always frustrating and hardly ever practical. Still, I write. Because if there is one thing of which I am
most proud, it is that I have never settled for the easy or the material. I believe a writer has to be an idealist as
well as a man of action, that the passion to write is born from the passion to
live, to go further, to experience more. So good writing can be nothing but difficult,
because it is the unique expression of a complex life.
According to biographer
Irving Stone, “Jack London believed that dig could move more mountains than
faith ever dreamed of.” Many would see
this as the motto of a pragmatist; London himself might even defend
the conviction on those grounds. But in
his heart, London believed as I do: that it is the motto of a free spirit and an
indomitable optimist. It is my motto,
and I have put it to the test more than once.
Most recently it led me on
an adventure inspired by not only London’s words, but those of
Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau, Joseph Conrad, John Steinbeck, Paul
Theroux, and many others. Gaining
courage from their immortality, in early 2000 my wife Gayl and I gave up land’s
securities and embarked on a two-year sailing voyage aboard our 32-foot cutter Tamarac II. Our
travels took us through Mexico’s Sea of Cortez, down the coast of
mainland Mexico and finally, in the spring
of 2001, to the wondrous South Pacific.
There, we spent seven months exploring the rarely visited islands of the
Marquesas, which are celebrated in Melville’s Typee, the isolated and mostly
uninhabited Tuamotu atolls, and the idyllic Society Islands.
It was the journey of a
lifetime, filled with as much excitement as quiet time in which to read and
write. It was also anything but
easy. For those two years we lived a
life of extremes: bad days were
horrific, good days were incredible. But
every day was lived as it should be:
full of purpose and passion.
And in truth, they had to
be, since as late as 1997, I did not know how to sail. At the time I was working for a local
magazine, Coast, and wrote a story on
the OCC Sailing Center. Call it an overly romantic vision of a young
writer going to sea, but I signed up for a class in basic dinghy sailing, and
that was all it took. For the next three
years my wife and I devoted most of our free time—not to mention money—to the
goal of exploration. Finally, we bought
a 24-year-old sailboat, sold our house, cars and most possessions, said goodbye
to good careers and set our sights on the horizon. Our friends labeled us as nuts, but I felt
sure of our decision. Why? Because it echoed the ideals I had gleaned
from great books I had read since childhood.
It felt bold and grand. But most
of all, it felt alive. ž
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