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Joseph Campbell tells us all to find our bliss; whatever that bliss may be is how we will continue to be happy throughout the trials of our individual lives.
I believe I found my bliss long ago in several places to be exact. One place is somewhere on Rock Island, just off the Door Peninsula in Wisconsin, where I and some friends kayaked across to relax and camp for several nights. On the day of our return, a Midwestern rain storm brewed up and laid us out inside the boat house that is also a museum one floor up. Interesting enough, this island and more specifically this boathouse was once home to Chester H. Thordarson, the inventor of high output volt transformers. Though the history books don’t pay mind to them, the rumors of the time still surface today saying that Chester threw such great parties at this boat house that the likes of Al Capone would arrive by sea plane to attend.
″I was in the second wave of escapees...we bounded over the white caps heading for our cars and dryer times...″
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Unfortunately, we weren’t attending such a party. And as the storm kicked up more and more, we remembered it was late fall and the water not forgiving with its temperatures, so the novice sea kayakers among us (yours truly included) decided not to risk the four foot waves of Lake Michigan, and were more likely to stay the night in the boat house, as the tents we had were soaked beyond hope of a decent nights sleep.
Out beyond the haze, towards Washington Island, we could all see something rocketing over the waves in our direction. As it got closer we all saw it to be a Zodiak, and it was coming right inside the boat house.
Rock Island is a Wisconsin state park and it is only right that a ranger should be here on a day like this. His shift had just begun. The rangers pull something like four days on island to three days off. We were lucky enough that our trip ended on the day he returned. He was a grizzled old man who said very little to us. We didn’t have to explain much to him of our situation either; he just knew what our problem was and immediately we began loading the Zodiak, hooking kayaks behind it, and off went the first wave of us to the looming safety of Washington Island.
I was in the second wave of escapees, and as we bounded over the white caps heading for our cars and dryer times, I watched my friend Jared in the distance, braving the frigid waters and waves, because he couldn’t call it a vacation if he was rescued, and he couldn’t call it an adventure if it ended with a motor on the boat he rode into shore. He aimed his bow into the waves, hardly paddled on his starboard, because the current through Jackson Harbor was too intense, leaving ships in the past strewn across the rocks separating Washington and Rock island. Jared came to shore just fine, as we all had expected; we loaded up our cars, changed into dryer clothes and went on our way to finding the ferry back to Door County.
My bliss was inherited when we weathered this storm for nearly a day before we were rescued. Bored with a boat house made of stone, we hiked about, and although some of us were worried about not returning to school on time for our classes, life couldn’t have been better. In an intense situation, where time could have dragged on miserably, we huddled together, spoke of our impending plans, how we might get off the island, or how long we might stay. None of us fretted, only wondered what was coming next. I felt like I could weather any storm as long as they were all by my side. I found bliss in my company and in the unknown circumstances that hounded us all.
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