Noah’s mom suddenly recognizes me, too. She looks at me hard and does not mince words, “Noah is in China. He is writing his second book with his Princeton professor. And you…” She pauses and looks at me with a mix of pity and judgment, “What are you doing?”
“Selling knives. So I can go hiking,” I stammer.
“Don’t you have any ambition?”
The words sting. Everyone is doing more and succeeding more than I am. If I am as smart as those elementary school teachers thought, why am I working a job that has me driving a hundred miles to sell a bagel spreader? I’m a disappointment to my parents. I get out of that house as quickly as I can. Then I quit. I hike a long section of the Pacific Coast Trail, but only after I polish my resume and send out fifty applications for “real” jobs. I am going to change the world.
I become a teacher, like my mother, my aunt, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother before me. I love my job. I like the look of concentration on my students’ faces. I love clean chalkboards and the smell of sharpened pencils. I imagine all the discoveries my students and I are going to make as we read and explore new ideas. But I am surprised by the question I hear most often. My students ask, “Is this right?” as in, “Is this answer right?” or “Did I do this essay right?” They don’t ask questions born from curiosity, but from fear. I understand my students’ desire to please and to perform too well. But that doesn’t help my students who collapse on my couch in anxious tears. They say, “I’m so tired of needing perfect grades, perfect test scores, and the perfect body.”
How do we banish the idea that we have to be perfect before we begin?
2
I meet my future husband in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is a clear, calm day. I am the only beginner among expert kayakers going to Anacapa Island, thirteen miles off Santa Barbara, California.
What am I doing here? I left a great teaching career to take a job working for a famous mountaineer, Rick Ridgeway. I met him and his wonderful wife, Jennifer, when I was teaching their oldest daughter. I help Rick develop book ideas and film proposals for National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. He works project-to-project, never knowing when the next paycheck might roll in. This uncertainty makes me anxious, which makes ours a good working partnership. He goes on risky adventures, while I stay back in the office and secure the next contract.
One week, Rick asks to see me. He doesn’t like meetings, at least not the conference-room kind. He prefers “floating meetings.” This means that we get together at the local surf break and talk business. I zip up my wetsuit and wax my board nervously, because the waves are a fair size today and I don’t know how I’ll be able to keep up with Rick, much less concentrate on agenda items, as the waves crash around us. But I can’t let him down.
I walk to the water’s edge and step reluctantly into the freezing, roiling ocean. Rick surfs powerfully, while I flail on my giant longboard. Between waves, we float on our boards and I listen to Rick’s latest idea for an expedition, a book, and for conserving more wild spaces around the world. We discuss plans and logistics. He is energized and tossing tasks at me quickly. How am I going to remember all these details? I wish there was a way to keep a pen and notebook in my wetsuit. As I am daydreaming about waterproof paper, Rick surprises me with a request.
“I want you to interview someone for my next book who will only be in the country for five days.” Rick says.
“So you want me to meet him at the airport?” I guess.
“No, the whole time he’ll be in a kayak. I want you to paddle across open ocean with him. Have you ever been in a sea kayak?” Rick asks.
“No,” I say.
“Well, want to try something new? What do you say?”
Before I can answer, Yvon Chouinard paddles his surfboard next to us. Rick and Yvon are old friends, having climbed together in Tibet, Bhutan, Chile, and Argentina, among other places. Yvon and his wife, Melinda, started the Patagonia clothing company just a block from here. Yvon often surfs at this local break, and sometimes joins us.
Now there are two adventure legends looking at me, waiting for my answer. How can I say no? I remember one of Rick’s favorite sayings, “Commit. Then figure it out.”
“Well, if you think I can do it…”
Yvon is a man of few words. He sits back, pivots his board to catch a wave, and looks at us.
“Enough talk. C’mon, let’s surf,” Yvon says with a mischievous grin. He pops up on the wave and glides effortlessly down its liquid-green face. Rick stares at me, waiting.
“Yes?” I say to Rick, more of a question than a statement. It’s enough for him. He gives me a big, approving smile, then spins on his board to catch the next wave.
How hard can it be? I think to myself.
Turns out, pretty hard. There is a big difference between surfing near shore and heading out into open ocean in a narrow kayak. One week later, I am floating in a vast sea where there are sharks, shipping lanes, unpredictable winds, and massive waves to worry about. To make matters worse, the man Rick wants me to interview refuses to talk until we reach the island, twelve miles into the Pacific. Now I have to go. There is no turning back.
Paddling the kayak feels easy, but I am not going very far or fast. Still, I feel good. I’m pulling it off; no one in our group knows I am a rookie, I think.
“You’re holding the paddle upside down,” says a gentle voice.
The voice belongs to a guy with curly brown hair and a long beard. He slides his kayak next to mine, shows me how to hold the paddle, and doesn’t make a big scene.
“I’m Kurt,” he says. “I’m one of the kayak guides your interviewee hired; I’m here to help the group navigate the shipping lanes and shark-y areas.”
“Oh. Is this where they found the girl’s body last year, eaten by a shark?”
“Well, they’re not sure that the shark killed the girl. It may have snacked on her after the fact,” says Kurt. As if that makes it all better.
I start paddling fast toward the island. I have a sudden urge to reach land.
“Let’s take a compass bearing first, Speedy,” Kurt jokes.
Meanwhile, the man I am supposed to be interviewing is far ahead of us, working with another guide. There’s no chance we can talk now. I realize that there is no way for me to reach him or land for several hours. Luckily, Kurt is here and wants to talk.
“So is it true? Are the poles really going to switch?” I say out of the blue. I read once that the Earth’s magnetic field inexplicably reverses itself sometimes, so that the north magnetic pole becomes the south.
I am hoping that someone who can navigate with a compass can reassure me about this event.
“Oh yeah. Pretty soon now,” Kurt says, without hesitation.
“But if we lose north, what will we set our compasses to?”
“Well, we may have to look south to find north,” he says with a mix of wonder and jest. A flock of pelicans glides by us, an inch from the sea’s surface, somehow never dipping their blue-gray wingtips in the ocean.
“Birds and whales migrate thousands of miles and they don’t rely on any one thing,” he continues. “They’ve blindfolded birds and attached magnets to their heads to scramble the magnetic field. The birds always make it home,” Kurt says.
“So they have something like a deeper, internal compass to guide them?” I ask.
“It seems like it. Or just multiple ways to locate themselves. Whales navigate through the arctic by bouncing calls off the