Becoming ....

I recently ran across an article online with this headline: Mark Knopfler: This getting older stuff ain’t for wimps.

That resonates for two … no, three reasons: first, I had a birthday this month. Second, I think Mark Knopfler is a fine songwriter and I’ve always enjoyed his music. Third, it echoes something my cousin Bobby said to me several years ago: “It takes a stout heart to grow old.”

Past a certain point, getting older has certain drawbacks, particularly if you are overly concerned with how the prevailing, youth-obsessed culture regards you.

The fact that in my mind I’m still a 20-something in the absurd and inexplicable situation of being trapped in a 40-something body is beside the point.

That thing your parents and grandparents told you – it goes so fast – is increasingly clear. The clock seems to tick a bit faster with every passing year. You realize that there’s something rather final just over the horizon; the bearing has not in fact changed, and the range is decreasing rapidly.

It’s not all bad. There also are advantages. I’ll admit that it took me a long time – way too long, at great cost – to “grow up.” To accept that those legendary adult responsibilities had my name on them. 

And then figure out how to meet them.

It wasn’t until my fourth decade or thereabouts that I finally started to get a handle on what is really important to me. Or even what I really thought about a lot of things.

The good news in all that, at least for me, is that the model I had in my head in my youth: grow, learn, take what I’ve learned and go do, coast into retirement with a genteel hobby or two…. has turned-out to be not terribly accurate.

It’s more like: grow, learn, do; grow, learn, do; grow, learn; grow, learn … hopefully right up until the end, whenever that will be.

That is to say, people change.

Scott Miller sings: “How am I ever gonna be me? How am I ever gonna be me, Lord? How am I ever gonna be if I’m not who I’m supposed to be?”

I learn new stuff every week: about being a dad, a husband, a son, a mariner, a man. Some of the lessons are bitter and I’m ashamed it’s taken me so long. Sometimes I feel smug, even triumphant, after mastering something, only to discover I’m still not done. Not by a long shot.

So … mid-forties, certainly with more years behind me than ahead of me, here’s what I know today.

1.  I’m not as smart as I used to think I was.
2. But I’m smart enough to realize that much of what I learned in school and in church as a kid was just flat wrong, or at least does not accord with the world as I have found it since.
3. Having a kid takes the skin right off a man, to quote a friend of mine. It’s the hardest thing in the world, and the best thing, and nothing is the same after.
4. Kindness matters more than almost anything else.
5. The practice of kindness notwithstanding, some people are just assholes, or mentally ill, and in either case unless there is a familial or professional (i.e., you are a proctologist or a psychologist) obligation, you should get the hell away from those people.
6. Despite #5, most people are mostly doing the best they can most of the time.
7.   The things you think are really important when you are 25 may not be the same things you think are really important 20 or 30 years later.
8. Friends matter. Especially the ones who have stuck around for 20 or 30 or 40 years, through all that learning and growing.
9. Of all the things I regret, and there are many, among them I cannot identify a single day I spent fishing or birding or just sitting somewhere watching water move. That’s some good shit.
10.  This list will change in the future.

One of the things I have not learned yet is how to splice a plaited (eight-strand) line. We chafed right through an eye during weather the other night, I had printed directions in hand, and I thought: “Well, how hard can it be?”

A couple of hours later, I can tell you it’s pretty hard. At least with this ratty line and in poor light. Maybe I’ll try again in the morning, if we’re not busy at the platform.

Diversity in the Workplace

A workboat is a pretty self-contained and limiting environment. While the boat itself may touch down in three different states (or, alternatively, sit in one place) over the course of a month, the crew members typically don't leave the vessel.

Pink-spotted hawk moth, Agrius cingulatus.

Sometimes we have to to hike across a cement or gravel logistics yard to deliver paperwork to a dispatcher. But that's about it.

And for someone like me -- someone who has always been curious about the world around him -- that is sometimes a hard way to live.

My paternal grandfather was an enthusiastic taxonomist and amateur naturalist: plants, fungi, rocks and minerals, artifacts ... he enjoyed searching for, identifying and collecting found treasures.

My favorite activity with my father, as a youngster, was "going to the flats" (the tidal marsh across the street, on the banks of the Intracoastal Waterway) or to Padre Island National Seashore where we could find everything from horned lizards and king snakes to olive and sundial shells to glass fishing floats.

There are some professional taxonomists in the family as well, and they served to heighten my interest in the natural world over the years.

In college, exploring the Trinity River bottomlands when I should have been studying, I was delighted to find beavers on campus, in the heart of one of the nation's largest metropolitan areas.

Black Witch, Ascalapha odorata.
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When I lived in deep South Texas I was charmed not just by the austere beauty of the Tamaulipan thorn forest and the vast Laguna Madre, but also by the rich procession of tropical species, many of which are found nowhere else in the United States.

I was so enthralled with the flora and fauna of South Texas that I enrolled in a program sponsored by Texas A&M University and the Corpus Christi Convention and Visitors Bureau and became one of the early certified wildlife guides in the area.

On the boat we spend a lot of time in South Louisiana, which is an interesting landscape, but aside from resident bald eagles and black bear crossing signs on the highway doesn't offer many s)urprises. That is to say, it's not so different from where I grew up: the same Gulf of Mexico, the same spartina and black mangrove marsh, largely familiar and predictable shorebirds and marine life ....

Banded sphinx moth, Eumorpha fasciatus

Being stuck on a boat for 28 days does offer two advantages, though: the first is a couple of 1,000-watt halogen work lights illuminating our deck.

The second is that for 27 nights in a row I have nowhere else to go and nothing else to look at, other than what those lights attract.

And what they attract are moths. Sometimes hundreds, sometimes dozens, sometimes just a handful, but every night it is not pouring rain, there are moths on the deck.

Often there are scores of tiny moths, "micromoths," that are probably intricately patterned or delicately formed, but are too much of a chore to identify with my 45-year-old eyes.

Tersa sphinx, Xylophenes tersa

Sometimes, maybe once a week or so, there are macromoths -- hummingbird- or even sparrow-sized insects that are intricately and beautifully patterned.

Until recently I hadn't thought much about moths. I was familiar of course with a couple of the large and obvious hawk moths from home, and I certainly paid attention to the occassional saturnids -- luna moths and imperial moths -- that came to a porch light.

But I always sort of assumed that butterflies, the daytime showboats of the order lepidoptera, where more interesting and glamorous than moths.

I've recently learned, though, that of the roughly 175,000 species of butterflies and moths, the former account for only about 18,000. All the rest are moths.

And while plenty are drab or vaguely patterned (the mostly nocturnal moths typically find their mates through pheremones rather than color and pattern, as do the diurnal butterflies), many sport incredibly beautiful colors and patterns, particularly on their often-hidden hind wings.

Ello Sphinx, Erinnyis ello

There are two fun groups on Facebook that I turn to for entertainment and education; the first is a group of working mariners and ship spotters called "Supply Boat History."

The second is a collection of amateur and professional lepidopterists called "Mothing and Moth-Watching." Both have active members from around the world.

Who knew?

The moth-watchers have been particularly helpful and encouraging, mostly confirming IDs (Mississippi State University has a terrific resource in their Moth Photographers Group site).

One morning a week or so ago, I was excited to post some photos of a new-to-me moth that I had proudly identified as a rare-ish Louisiana endemic.

Louisiana eyed silk moth, Automeris louisiana

A couple of hours later, the fellow who first described the insect back in 1981 was commenting on the photo. How cool is that?

Out here in the oil patch, it's mostly (though not exclusively) white men working on boats. And our view of the natural world, while sometimes stunning (especially at dawn and dusk), is necessarily circumscribed.

With that in mind, I can view the moths only as a gift, renewed every night under the aft deck worklights.

Smorgasbord

Some days in the West Delta field a layer of silty, brown water floats on top of the Gulf's opaque green. It's outflow from the Mississippi River, several of the mouths of which are nearly in sight. Throttle up and the boat's propellers create a green "hole" in the muddy freshwater.

Old Man River carries all sorts of nutrients that feed small organisms that feed bigger organisms ... you know, that whole food chain thing. At Barataria Pass, the Gulf inlet through which we travel several times a day, strong currents from Barataria Waterway and Bay, Bayou Rigaud and the Gulf itself converge in a channel that in some places is as deep as 150 feet.

It is a smorgasbord for fin and feather.

There are dozens -- scores -- possibly hundreds of dolphins in and around the pass. Oddly, I have yet to see one longer than about 5 feet. They are noticeably smaller and darker than the same species in the Coastal Bend and in South Texas.

I've seen more brown pelicans here than anywhere in Louisiana, and there is a colony of black skimmers on Fifi Island, just across the bayou. There also appear to be some scattered black mangroves, which is interesting.

Herring and ring-billed gulls, along with my old familiars laughing gulls abound, and often soar along next to us at wheelhouse level as we come through the pass.

Offshore, there are quite a few northern gannets, members of the booby family. These striking birds are ungainly in the water, as on land, and it's apparently a great effort for them to make a long, paddling take-off.

Often I catch sight of them frantically swimming out of the way of the boat, tails wagging rapidly. *The Northern Gannet photo is courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Wildlife

I said in the previous post that we don’t have a lot of bugs or birds in the field we usually work. I haven’t seen any noteworthy pelagic birds yet, but a yellow-billed cuckoo did land on the boat the other day.

I suspect that during the spring migration, in particular, we’ll get some neo-tropical fallout aboard the boat.

We’ve had some interesting moths hitch rides. Back at the dock, there’s a resident alligator and I’m told that in the winter there are lots of bald eagles along the Atchafalya and Gulf Intracoastal Waterway here.

Otherwise, the birds are pretty much the same we see on the Texas Gulf Coast – White Ibis, Great Blue Herons, Laughing Gulls, Brown Pelicans, grackles and mockingbirds top the list.

Out in our regular field, we frequently see large barracudas and the occasional shark around the platforms. Blue runners (hardtails) and Bermuda chubs are common on the surface. Dolphins (dorado, mahi-mahi) cruise through from time to time. Haven’t seen any tuna or billfish yet, but I’m sure I will.

It’s a pity the company has a no-fishing policy. I’m pretty sure our platforms are loaded with snapper, grouper and amberjack.

I’ve fleetingly glimpsed a few dolphins (the mammals) out here; I didn’t get a good look, but they were small and I’m guessing were the Atlantic white-spotted species.

The coolest critters I’ve seen so far are the flying fish. We have big ones and little ones. The big ones, which sometimes land on our deck, look a lot like mullet with wings. The little ones look just like grasshoppers taking flight from a field, and I’m pretty sure they occupy about the same ecological niche out here.