Recap: Alamos with Robert Cabot! (w/ pics!)

[Matt] I just finished the first novel I have read in ten years ^[1], and it took the thought of spending time with the author to make that finally happen.  Unfairly discrediting authors everywhere (and doing a disservice to myself), I had mentally shelved all fiction within the mindless entertainment category, side by side with television, spectator sports, and the majority of current Hollywood films.  If it were not shipwright texts or instructional voyaging manuals, I had a bent for social commentary, with a couple of standouts being American Mania: When More is Not Enough and Your Money or Your Life.

The Joshua Tree was written by Robert Cabot and was first published in 1970.  I found the writing style to be difficult to read, and, in all honesty, I had started this book on three separate occasions since my mother sent me a copy as a gift in 2009.  What I did not realize was that it was not the writing style or the singularly unique composition of the words on the pages which was hindering me:  it was only my state of mind. 

And I am free now. 

I fell in to the words and the scattered message, relinquishing my mind to the strokes of the brush of genius.  Through the characters and their storied lives, through the fog of distant memories rekindled and their role in shaping of the future self, I am lost in the pages.  Good.

                Let us receive this soul, this gentle sad soul, we the desert, the olive hills and black peaks, distances down the curve of the valleys, the pure sun slanting up the canyons.

                Yes, we receive, we accept, those that would come to us.  There were so many, there are now so few.  But now is nothing, time is nothing but the cycling.  Forever is moments linked to this circling sun.  We are not indifferent:  each is all because there is no all, so we totally accept.  Come to us, let the leaves fall as they will, lie down with us, join us, be the eternal rebirth, received and receiving.

                We bear your scars:  the asphalt and the concrete lined over us; tracks deep in the sand, uprooting, the clutch of rigid hands, the scream of the sirens; the borings and strippings; the rippings and the pluckings and the cutting, cutting, cutting; the burnings; the debris, the stinks, the creeping pollutions.  We must heal; O let us!

Take it for yourself:  

His other works include That Sweetest Wine:  Three Novellas (1999) and The Isle of Kheria (2012).  Stay tuned for his forthcoming Returning Time:  A Memoir of the American Century and a new novel, The Mango Tree.

Why were we spending time with the author of this book?  Robert had commissioned the good ship AEOLI to be built some 46 years ago.  He is her only previous owner. 

I had first met Robert and his wife, Penny, when he informed me that a few extra pieces of boat gear might be collected from his home one year after AEOLI had been acquired.  I borrowed Simon Martin’s truck for the trip, and after loading everything up, Robert and Penny invited me to stay for dinner.  While they got to know a bit about me, I was timid and hesitant to ask too many questions myself based on his known stature.  I came home with an old Monitor windvane, downwind poles, and a great many more questions.  But one little detail stuck:  in the winters, they like to spend time in a little town in the mountains of Sonora, Mexico.

After the wedding festivities wrapped up, I thought I might follow up and see where this lead might take us.  This brought on a most unexpected and lovely experience.

Robert would come to meet us in Topolobampo to see AEOLI and all that we have done to her for the first time since they had parted ways in Seattle four years ago to the day.  [Rachel] When we arrived, Robert had already been to the marina and instructed the personnel there that he should be contacted upon our docking.  Although we had run over-night and mostly wanted a shower and good night's rest, we had Robert over to the boat for a quick look (it was already dark) and dinner at the marina restaurant Pelicanos.  The next morning, Robert returned to the boat for a light breakfast of homemade biscuits, fruit, and yogurt and a real look at all the work that we had done to AEOLI.

Reviewing the original bill of sale, Panama Canal transit papers, and other documents.

After breakfast, we drove to Alamos on a scenic dirt road through the mountains, mostly used by ranchers in the area. His home is a wonderfully renovated and decorated colonial style house centered around an open-air courtyard. 

The town of Alamos itself is filled with colonial style mansions indicative of a much wealthier history (silver mining boom, capital of the region, influx of Americans purchasing property beginning in the 1950s) than the other cities in Mexico that we have visited. We ate lunch at the Hacienda Los Santos, a fancy hotel consisting of about 12 neighbouring houses purchased by an American couple renovated and combined into a single compound. 

We also walked up the steps to the local look-out to enjoy the view of the city nestled in the valley and the surrounding mountains at sunset.

In all we spent about 3 days with Robert, and without hyperbole, the visit stimulated and catalyzed our minds as never before.  He is extremely intelligent, broad, inquisitive, worldly, yet still entirely identifiable.  As an 89 year old man, he knew more about certain current technologies than a couple of thirty-something engineers.  As the only previous owner of our sailboat, we also shared the special connection of adventures set in the same place but in a completely different time.

And his take on the visit:

“It was three days of intense non-stop conversation, comparing stories, views. Rachel and Matt, two brilliant, driven achievers, highly successful in their professions, coming from middle-class hard-working families in the heartlands of North America. Two young people who had chosen to take at least two years out of their career-oriented lives, opting for a totally different life of adventuring out into and across the oceans. Reexamining their lives, their philosophies, their goals, intensely pondering the fate of this endangered planet. For me, remarkable stories of searching, of hope in the largely doomful world of today.”

[Matt]  At the very least these words are a sincere charge to us to forge ahead with our intellects in assessing the society in which we find ourselves and our responsibility to create a place within it.  I hope it goes beyond that to incite all of you to consider the same and to continue exploring on your own life paths.

Alamos Album 

[1]  The last was Robert Ludlum’s The Prometheus Deception in 2002, which had been suggested in the “reading room” of Wiley Hall SW 169 by my dorm roommate and close friend, Matt Ferguson.  His next recommendation was Robin Lee Graham’s Dove…Modern people actually sail small boats all over the world?  Hmm…That sounds interesting.