Kindness and Consideration

Brewerton, west shore of Oneida Lake

Teachers learn a lot about bullying behavior, about the pressures and temperaments that bring it on, and about the attention, honesty, and empathy that can help to mend psyches and emotions. These thoughts accompany me today as I bask in the unconditional kindness of the crew here at the marina in Brewerton, especially retired-teacher-now-marina-maven Patty. Our teacherly spirits have prompted her to invite me to dinner tonight ‘to tell her my story,’ and I look forward to a home-cooked meal and riffing about teaching … and life.

I’ve pulled in early today – 12 noon – after 13 miles. I face a 22 mile open water crossing of Oneida Lake … after a stiff headwind and predicted (and increasingly evident) thunderstorms. I just don’t think I have it in me to push off for a minimum five hour maximum effort with one eye to the sky … the proverbial ‘weather eye.’ So I’ve pulled into this marina to dry out, rest up, and to launch at 5 AM tomorrow when, hopefully, all will be glass. I’ll have to be attentive to Patty’s possibly heavy hand on the cab, vodka, or gin.

Marinas don’t especially cotton to rowers; we don’t buy gas or need mechanical services, we don’t hook up to utilities, and we require no purging of our (boat’s) holding tanks. And they don’t like the vagabond look of tents and laundry and coolers and scraggy guys sitting at picnic tables writing in soggy journals.

That’s where Patty comes in.

Did I mention she’s a retired teacher?

Anyway, for no personal gain she pitched high and inside to her boss to allow me to stay here … so here I am.

Compare this largesse to the draconian, inflexible, insensitive ‘enforcement’ official at Mexico Bay State Park two nights ago. Late in the afternoon, after a good but grueling 37 miles along the east rim of Lake Ontario, I was beat … and found a secluded State Park launch ramp … with a rest room facility – gold! The place was deserted and no official manned the little booth at the perimeter parking lot, so I pitched my tent, washed some shirts, ate an early dinner, and was just about to climb in for the night, when an officer of Parks arrived in a patrol car and, with no questions of me, told me that ‘It is illegal to camp here; you have to leave.’  

    

I appealed to common sense and expediency, explaining that  I’d just come in after 10 hours on the water, I’d be packed up and gone by 6 AM, and that I’d be happy to pay a fee for the privilege if an attendant were at the gate. As I said, there wasn’t a soul around.

‘It’s illegal. You must leave.’

I lamented to her th at through ten days and three hundred miles of rowing in Canada, not once had anyone refused a gentle request for a campsite; in fact, all I met was welcoming encouragement.  

‘This isn’t Canada. You must leave.’

So at 7 PM, as the sun was plummeting into Lake Ontario – a restless Lake Ontario – I packed up my kit and under Officer Itsillegal’s watchful eye, I pushed off … furious, but polite. Seething, but calm. Incredulous … but recognizing that ‘it’s illegal’ is a safe call for someone who will accept no risk for variance, for judgement, for consideration. Put the 65-year-old teacher back in his boat at dusk on Lake Ontario … the park is now secure, the law has been upheld. After all, it’s all about the law.   

So, Patty pushes against a tough boss and gets me in … Officer Itsillegal applies institutional bullying to a situation that hinted for a higher interpretation.

So … three miles out of Mexico Bay Park, fuming, ‘rowing angry’ with no clue of where I’d put in … and with cresting waves at the beam causing some concern … I spy a couple on a deck high above the rocky shore. I’m close enough to see them lift their glasses (as if to a doomed mariner?), and he shouted, ‘Nice canoe!’  I shamelessly grabbed at his overture like a life buoy, responding, ‘Actually, it’s not a canoe; it’s an Adirondack Guide Boat. And, may I ask, do you know of a place I might pull up for the night?’

‘Meet me at the next point, about a quarter mile up,’ he called, and he was gone.

To make a long story short (here), Ness and Joan, my unwitting but well-timed benefactors, gave me their trust and consideration, unconditionally and without hesitation, in a way that the law of our land and an agent of that law would not an hour earlier.  

As I curled up in my tent in a howling gale that night, I contemplated that often, as ‘an organized society,’ we struggle mightily to be able to do the right things with compassion, common sense, and empathy.

But one-on-one, we usually do fine.

Life on a scale of one. Sweet.