Oy! Do you hear the sound? Is it my anxiety grating along my last nerve like Bahamian Rake and Scrape music? Is it the call of the Everglades ebbing and flowing like a thick tide in my chest, tormenting me as Poe's tell-tale heart?
I can hear it so very clearly now. It is the beat of drums in the distance of time, a summons, for a gathering of the WaterTribe. It beats a tattoo of welcome to the experienced and pulses a warning for those yet to be initiated in the ways of the Everglades Challenge. The drums taunt all entrants equally, the brave, the ignorant, or those simply crazy.
In thirty days, testosterone, of both sexes, will flood "The Beach" on Mullet Key.
A group of experienced small watercraft adventurers will risk the quirks of Mother Nature. They will endure capriciousness of Sister Sea. These women and men will confront exhaustion, dehydration, hypothermia and face fears real and imagined while navigating their cockleshells south by paddle, pedal or sail in this extreme trek down the coast through the Everglades to Key Largo. Three hundred miles of uncertainty, three hundred chances to quit, and three hundred opportunities to prevail. It will be a challenge for all, survival for some. What will it be for me?
I hear the drum to which I answer. It drives me as if I were a galley slave. It forces an uncommon focus. I am here but my mind marches to the WaterTribe beat. The slow bass sound hardens my resolve. Uncharacteristically, my work ethic tightens on boat preparation, navigation, equipment tweaks, physical readiness, procedures and a score of other concerns from here to there. My brain freezes fears into tiny cubicles to be dealt with as time allows. I mentally review systems and frequently play what if games during the night and as I finally succumb to the persuasion of Morpheus late in the dark of morning, the drum, the spirit guide of WaterTribe murmurs, "Give to me your being and you shall learn of living by pain, fear and chaos.
Capt Bones! Shut-up and peddle.
