ZEN AND THE ART OF DOCK INSTALLATION (PART III)

MAY 14, 2024 – (Cont.) Saturday’s nearly six hours of heavy labor left me feeling as I had every time after skiing the 52km American Birkebeiner Ski Marathon. I was so utterly exhausted, my walk was down to a shuffle. I was afraid to lie down for fear I wouldn’t be able to get back up. I also worried that even if I could walk the next morning and negotiate my way down the stairs, I’d be no good for the task ahead—conquering that steep bank above the dock.

To my surprise, however, Sunday morning I was not only fully ambulatory but refreshed and recharged. After a healthful breakfast chased down with caffeine, I hiked to the dock at Björnholm 400 yards down the shore. My idea was to inspect the condition of the 11-foot-long staircase (10 – 2 x 12 steps attached to 2 x 10 stringers) that Dad had designed and built 50 years ago. It was part of the ancient dock system that I used to help him install starting when I was 14 and installed on my own—while Dad watched—when I was 17 and older.

The old lichen-covered set of stairs was leaning against the back of the large boat box that Grandpa had built over 75 years ago. Fortunately, the staircase had been turned on its side with one stringer resting on treated lumber so as to be off the ground. Aside from a bit of rot at the bottom end of the stringers and where leaves and other detritus had collected, the staircase was in remarkably good shape. The limited rot at the stringer ends could be cut away and did not otherwise compromise the structural integrity of Dad’s work.

But the rot resistant treated lumber weighed a ton—or at least a 100 pounds I figured, after cutting through the stringers to eliminate one full step (and the rotted stringer ends), which weighed about 10 pounds. But I’d come prepared with ropes and a yard-long, four-inch-diameter pine log. I managed to maneuver the staircase onto the log, which I then deployed as a wheel and rolled the heavy steps to the edge of the 15-foot-high embankment. There I allowed gravity into play but used ropes to control its indiscriminate power.

After donning the waders, I shimmied down the bank after the staircase, which was now resting on the stones and boulders awash in the lake. I lashed a rope to the end step and pulled the staircase off the rocks and out to sea. Grasping the rope over my shoulder, I then began the long tow from the Bjornholm dock (a modern dock installed in less than half an hour by a hired crew two weeks ago) to my newly installed “engineering marvel” far down the shore and out of sight around a slight bend.

The only way to know the earth is by walking it—especially in above-the-waist insulated waders while towing a 100-pound set of stairs. My slow pace was partly a function of caution. For reasons I explained in Part I, I didn’t want to trip and meet my doom. But I was also much aware that my exertions the day before had left me totally exhausted, and by slowing my work pace now, I’d finish with some strength in reserve.

It was on this 15-minute slog when the Zen of dock installation became fully apparent to me. As I moseyed along, I pondered the metaphorical aspects of my weekend project—everything from “engineering as a multi-dimensional chess game” to “pulling my burdens behind me but reducing their weight by setting them afloat.” This train of thought led me to consider the blog-post material that the project could produce. That idea, in turn, caused me to think about the discipline of daily writing and how it can make the writer more observant in the same way that taking lots of photographs can sharpen the eye of the photographer. In both cases—writing and photography; certainly painting portraits, still life, land- and seascapes—a symbiotic relationship forms between observational skills and the means by which those skills can be exercised and enhanced. In that symbiosis, Zen resides and thrives.

Just as I was mulling over the foregoing to full fruition I reached a mature Norway pine leaning low over the water. I noticed a finch, then another fluttering about among the branches. I stopped to observe them, the late morning sun gently warming the back of my neck and dancing playfully off lazy ripples moving across the water around me. The two birds were joining a well-hidden fleet of finches, and now all were happily atwitter. I marveled at how they carried on, oblivious to a geezer of the human species—in clumsy insulated waders, no less, and a wide-brim hat to protect his geezer head from a broadly smiling Ol’ Sol.

For reasons only a neurologist, philosopher, psychologist or theologian would seem to know, the synapses inside my shaded head thought of the Bible verse, “Consider the lilies and how they grow . . .” except I substituted “birds” for “lilies.”[1]

After admiring the birds for quite some while, I continued on my way but with a far lighter heart. The moments just passed were a sample of the paradise that exists on earth—if amidst our noise and freneticism we give ourselves a chance to see birds in the trees, lilies in the fields.

More of Zen.

For the next couple of hours I struggled with the steps, but with the aid of a chain, another rope, a come-along, a power drill, a power saw, ripping handsaws, and full complement of other dock installation tools, Dad’s half-century old staircase has been returned to service—same lake, same property, just farther down the shoreline of Björnholm, his family’s Shangri-La.

With the job done to my full satisfaction, I stood at the top of the steps and gazed down at the dock, the boat lift and out across the shining lake. My Zen experience had opened the way to nirvana.

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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson

[1] The full verse appears in Luke 12:27-40 and Matthew 6:28-33. The King James Bible reads, “Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”