I love city driving.

I have no problem diving into the fray of Boston traffic and elbowing my way across the city. It's a sort of sport.

But even I was somewhat cowed by conditions this summer, daily driving a manual car that barely works, with no air-conditioning, in a 100 deg heatwave, of rush hour Boston traffic. Yikes.

I was taking my daughter Abigail to sailing camp every day, a ten-mile trip across the city each way, and then picking her up again later in the heat of the afternoon. It was initially for three weeks but, as I predicted, she wanted to stay on for the second three-week session and was offered a spot in the level before Instructor-in-Training. Abigail hadn’t sailed since before the pandemic so this was quite an achievement.

Sailing on Boston harbor with its tankers and ferries and chaos is, in my opinion, a thing of more courage than driving on Boston roads, so I willingly said yes. I applauded her courage, even as I groaned inwardly at the driving.

I didn't know that a week into the second session, we'd find a way to afford a new-to-us car and I'd be in the lap of relative luxury: air conditioning, audiobooks via Bluetooth. Man, had I moved up into the current century. Even though that didn't cure all the other crazies being on the road.

Just a little August heat outside the car …

Taking a ‘Big Picture’ Break & What I Found

I had also taken that month off from writing Paperblogging.com for a deep dive look into the entirety of what I’ve posted.

Good old index cards. I filled one for each of Paperblogging’s 110 or so posts with details like title, date, tag, and category. Oh, and a card for each of the 70+ drafts you never got to see. What was going on there???

I filled about twelve cards a day. And in between drove my daughter with plenty of time idling in traffic to think.

What I found halfway through the index-card-filling project surprised the heck out of me. Two words kept occurring.

“Resilience
&
Wonder”

Mmm. So that’s what I’m interested in.

Resilience, as in the inner reserves that help us hold life together in difficult times.

And wonder, as in the childlike, often innocent gasp that comes from an unexpected joy—a sky filled with stars at night, finding a fossil on the beach, or something as simple as a bush of flowers covered with butterflies.

Not too much of either to be found in Boston traffic. Though you need resilience to get home again.

Reading Moby Dick in the Navy Yard

Every morning I found myself at the historic Charlestown Navy Yard where the aptly named Courageous Sailing has its headquarters. They are located one pier over from the USS Constitution, the "oldest commissioned naval vessel afloat in the world".

Daughter dropped off, I could turn right around, dive back into traffic and hustle my way back the 45 minutes through heat and driving madness. But almost every day I did not.

Instead, I rustled up a parking spot and put coins in for as long as I’d been in traffic. I took a small woven basket—I call it, somewhat embarrassingly, my ‘happy basket’—filled with whatever came to hand on the way out the door—coffee flask, book, sketchbook, binoculars—something unnecessary for efficiency—and I wandered around the Navy Yard enjoying the space.

Not yet the brutal heat of midday, I often went to the Adirondack chairs on the lawn in front of the Commandant's House. Under a shady linden tree on a rise of grass, I pulled one of the plastic Adirondacks aside from the others, plunked myself down, and took in the scene.

A breeze from the harbor stirred the five vibrant flags in front of Dry Dock #1 and the morning sun backlit the vivid colors. People arrived to work on restoring the famous warship. A crane often lifted the painters in their swinging basket alongside the hulking wooden hull of the Constitution. I saw the exterior of the ship made new with black paint and white trim over the summer.

The Constitution Museum swung open its red wooden doors. National Park Rangers walked purposefully across the expanse of the Navy Yard. Tourists meandered from the boat to the museum or back, taking their time and stopping for photos. Bikes rode by lazily across the mostly traffic-free expanse.

I began to notice weekly rhythms. One day a week, buff-colored, old-fashioned buses arrived full of army cadets to tour the museum. Always four or five cadets hung around outside on their phones.

Eventually, I read, or sipped my coffee, or sketched. In the Museum (where I bought a membership because I needed to use their restroom every day and where else was I going to go?) I bought a copy of Nathaniel Philbrick’s, Why Read Moby Dick?

Why indeed. Another unnecessary task, right? And of course, along with that, I bought Moby Dick itself, a lovely Penguin Classic Deluxe edition.

I decided to read four pages there every day. Enough to make a difference—in fact, many of the early chapters are only four pages long—but not too long to say I couldn’t do it. I was surprised how much I enjoyed what many consider an unreadable book, hugely helped by Philbrick’s enthusiasm.

Wonder

And one morning, heading back to the car, I passed the Navy Yard’s historic Dry Dock #2, which is left open and filled with water, and lingered on the wooden dock by the chain fence.

An underwater silver shimmer caught my eye. A silver shimmer that rose like an underwater murmuration of starlings. A shoal! I think it was herrings. They rose en masse, their open mouths like purple shadows as they flipped and dove in a loop, all streaming down again, a writhing ribbon of fish. I stood amazed. I’d never seen a shoal before.

I looked for them every day and saw them numerous times when the tide was low, always at the interior end of the open Dry Dock #2.

Then it was time to leave. Some days I lingered all day and wrote at a local cafe. But most days I had to return. And as I drove, I pondered the ideas of resilience and of wonder and how they both play their part in keeping me going.

Only on one day did I dive right back into traffic and muscle home without the pause to recover. I was debilitated with a headache for the rest of the day.

“Perhaps taking a break is the most productive path after all,” I concluded.

Taking a few minutes to note down the day. Just enough to notice details.

And so, a Mission Statement

Not everyone likes to look so much at the big picture, preferring to dash headlong into action, but I thrive on knowing what the heck it is I think I’m doing.

But I’ve never been able to write a mission statement. A pithy, one-sentence distillation of purpose, short enough to memorize, and simple enough that a 12-year-old can understand it. That according to author Laurie Beth Jones is what they should be.

With the sailing sessions over, just when I thought I could have downtime at home before the school year began, some crazy health and family matters dragged me under like a riptide. So I decided to tag along on an already planned family camping trip I hadn’t meant to join. It was time to get away for a bit even though camping is not usually my thing.

Sitting on a camp chair outside a yurt on Peddocks Island—one of thirty-four islands in Boston harbor—I came up with a mission statement. I had no idea so much of my summer would involve the harbor.

Pulling from Laurie Beth Jones' wonderful prompts in The Path: Creating Your Mission Statement for Work and for Life, and with a few edits once home, I came up with this, and it immediately clicked.

“I glean images, stories, and resources that restore resilience and inspire wonder—in myself, and those whose lives I touch—a gathering of wonder.”

— My Mission Statement

All the index-card-filling pulled the key words to my attention. And Jones’ rather old but helpful book stirred me to capture them into a sentence.

It turned out that writing it was an act of resilience in itself.

Resilience & Wonder Heading Forward

“How does wonder connect to resilience?” I was asked recently.

As the season swings to fall, I will dig deeper into what it might mean to restore our resilience as we revel in wonder. I will keep unpacking these twin ideas that together help peg sanity to the mast of many lives.

And those seventy draft posts that I found this summer? Some met a merciful end with, Yes, I’m sure I want to delete this post.

And those that resonate with either resilience or wonder will see the light of day, like The Beauty of Letterpress—which only needed photos and an edit before reaching publish. That is, before the chaos of August swung into full gear and I paused posting altogether until now.

Meanwhile, I might just steal down to the Navy Yard and those Adirondack chairs, before the weather completely turns, and read some more Moby Dick, a delightfully unnecessary task.