Bay Crossings Journal

A NIGHT RAFT OF DREAMS

By Bill Coolidge

It was early February, 2001 that I noticed these black and white bobbers in five acres of long neglected water sandwiched between containers piled 8 stories high on one side and the Wind System parking lot on the other. Into this northside Alameda Island cove of darkened water they wait. The waters reflected the words on the containers such as ‘linea mexicana’ or ‘genstar’. These boxcar containers are also waiting. Waiting for their time to come, a migration across the Pacific Ocean on two football field long container ships.

Into this slippering twilight water, stilled from traffic of boats, cars, humans, they have gathered silently. Night after night as I skirted the canyon of a thousand box cars, crossed long abandoned railroad tracks, pedaled past Weyerhauser Plant and Alameda Storage twinned for demolition to become a new ‘Marina Cove,’ a huge housing development to be built into my neighborhood, I kept spotting this white upon black. Into this oasis, these black and white bobbers, in the hundreds, come to settle, for rest, for dreams, waiting for the right time.

Subtle, in unison as if choreographed, they skirted away from me and my bike toward the nearby boxcars. Pieces of white, lumps of black, merging, moving. My night vision slowly settles in. Chalk and coal, small and large. Sleeping, rafting together. Heads gently broached on down feathers ebbing away from harm’s way. Me. "What kind of birds are these?" I asked as my bike passed under the last streetlight. I become a scurrying figure seeking the safety of this night passage, then quickly my shadow goes into hiding.

The next Saturday after work, I rode over in the sunlight to give some focus to what I barely discerned the other evening. A man and woman, also on bikes, stood, with binoculars in hand, birdbook in basket, stretched out toward these denizens of this neglected cove. The creosoted dock pilings nibbled on by harbor prey hang loosely in mid-air, no hold on the clay and muck.

"The smaller ones are Buffleheads the larger ones are Goldeneyes, I think," she points them out to me sweeping her red hair away from her face, pulls up her binoculars and takes another look.

"I’ve seen them at night. They are newcomers here this winter, weren’t here last winter," I offer. She continues to peer at them, unconcerned about my view of time, past and present. Nor the future which increasingly saddens me.

So much of what I love leaves. The Least Tern around Labor Day, The White Pelican arrive and leave in October. The juvenile Brown Pelican I had watched for months has moved on. "But," I tell myself, "This winter the coot, the cormorant, mallard, and the grebe have all fished my waterways, and companioned me through the stormy winter. Of this I am grateful, comforted by those who stay.

Mid-March. I have taken to sneaking over in my canoe and drifting by in my sailboat to keep watch over these birds readying for some great instinctual, gravational pull to go north to the Artic. I strain with my binoculars to pick them out at the far end of the wharf, but I only see a few heads bobbing. Many more white necked grebes. "They’ve tricked me!" I think, "They have left in clumps not all together." The next day I paddled over to the leeside of Coast Guard Island, thinking, hopefully that they went over there for better feeding opportunities. They weren’t there nor were the white satiny eleven, the confluence of egrets as a tribe, standing at low tide, meditating in between the racous caw of seagulls and skitterish walk on water feats of coots as I drift by in green canoe, snooping.

In my upright life, walking around and working I see this same flow occuring. At St. Vincent’s, a day shelter for homeless folk, there are several migrations occuring simultaneously. In and out of jail, sometimes prison. Men, infrequently women, return, hopped up, touchy, eyes moving constantly, talk staccatoed, sit and stand, go in and out the front door, aimless. Then there is staff. I have worked there for about a year and I am almost the longest tenured employee.

The most heartbreaking are those who find a job, luck out and find an affordable room or studio, then lose the job, lose the room, back on the street. These are the migrants of the night and they return to St. Vincent’s for a free meal, some companionship, something to do to fill the long daylight hours.

Like the father of the prodigal, I experience great joy when one who has disappeared for weeks or months returns. Tom came in last weekend after a bus trip to Florida to take care of a sick friend.

"Better than camping out," he said smiling, a smooth tan highlighting his delight in being back. "And I’ve been accepted into Hamilton, a roof over my head," he says proudly, eyes beaming. I felt like patting his brow, rubbing his shoulders. Maybe I am more like a mother hen, wanting to know my brood is safe and well, then I too become more firmly planted, in this place, in this time.

I live on a boat, my partner is in school, my neighbors who live on boats come and go, some to Mexico, others out across the Pacific, still others move away and buy affordable homes in other states. This human migration is entirely unpredictable.

Me, on a floating home, with seasons and tides, birds and neighbors constantly in flux, I want roots, a permanent anchor. "Just give me a Bufflehead or a Least Tern for a little while longer" I lament, yet in my own blood, Irish, people of the water, the Great Lakes as well as the inland ones harbor a genetic calling to go. Crossing boundaries, demarcations, land’s edge.

My biggest fear is this. In the Winter of 2002, will the Goldeneyes and the Buffleheads know that all has changed in their tucked away sanctuary? Will they know that the bulldozers and front-endloader have arrived. Gone will be the uninhabited Alameda Car Storage, gone Weyerhauser, and maybe even Containercare, the owner of boxcar canyon? New streets no longer stradling uneven railroad beds, multiple attached homes growing up, two car garages, yellow beamed streetlights. Their hideaway will be lit at night, busied during the day. Will they return? I think not. I believe they will choose to avoid us. Like the deserted cove in the between the Wind River parking lot and the acres of boxcars, they will discover the places we have turned away from. But where will I go to find them?

Yesterday the Coast Guard vessel Morgenthal honked her horn loudly at nine in the morning, by ten she had left port, on her way to the Gulf of Alaska. A rendezvous with the Goldeneye? Men and women leaving the dock, leaving spouses, partners, pets, friends and groundedness for a rolling life, going backwards into winter, incubating hopes and dreams for a whole season. I want to board ship with them, venture out. I want to jump ship and plant a garden.

Who stays? Who crosses over? How would I have known three years ago when I moved onto a sailboat that I would have chosen migratory birds to provide me with a steadying influence in my tidal life?