Artemis is Dead

Hours and hours of wind and rain. Salt spray and pounding waves, hammering, just hamering against the hull, over and over, the rise and the fall, the rise and fall, all those pre-dawn forays in pursuit of salmon - the fish of courage, the fish that battles its way up into those small streams to mate and lay their eggs in the places they were born. Then they die. The Point Reyes, lodged in a sandbar at Inverness, is dead. Her skeleton is all that remains. She will find fish no more. The great hunter is no longer a threat. Artemis is at rest. A fishing boat is not designed to be a thing of beauty; though often it is the lack of intentional beauty that produces it. The hulk of the Point Reyes is a beautiful object. It is accidental art. Her lines are more utilitarian than graceful, yet there is an elegance to the sweep of her bow and the rake of her standing. She seems to be reclining. She is an old reclining nude. In her exaggerated reflection, it's easy to imagine Noah's ark, with it's tall hull and tiny pilot house. The Point Reyes, though, was a killer, not a savior. It took fish from the sea. It also took a couple fisherman out to make their living when fishing was still something a man could do for one. She was a workhorse and she was well-used. Now she is a curiosity and a subject for soul-stealing photographers, who are also fishers of sorts.  The photographer is always trolling, always luring, always looking for something to catch. Photographers will sometimes sit motionless in one spot for hours and are known to travel great distances for a chance catch something and bring it back. The stillness of this scene belies the true nature its subjects. The sea is chaotic and rough. The boat is anything but static and useless. Yet here she lies - listing, rusting, warping.  And here lies an inlet to the sea, as glassy and still as a pool of hardened resin. The true nature of these things is not pictured here. This photograph is a lie, or at best a half truth. And the truth is that everything rots. Everything comes to a rest and decays. There is an end. There will be a day when we can no longer do that which we were best at. And when that happens, we can only pray that our final resting place is as lovely and fitting as this. 

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