Passages

Colon, Panama
December 30, 2017

This morning the sun rose over the Pacific. Soon thereafter, we sailed not only upstream, but uphill. Both David AND Alexander were awake at 5a. Did Lewis Carroll script this day?

What’s next? Negative interest rates? Five inches of snow in Atlanta before the first flake falls in Boston? George Franklin in Congress? What nature of place is the world in which we now live, how did we get here so fast, and where are we going now?

This time of year Janus is in his element, looking forward with anticipation and backward in recollection. We strive to do the same, but time moves relentlessly forward, faster with each passing year.

We have things to do, people to see, emails to answer, much of it ostensibly urgent, little of it retrospectively important. Fortunately, smartphones, the Internet, and social media allow us to waste time and ignore others with greater convenience and efficiency than ever before.

We certainly have no time to spend sailing peacefully and reflectively around South America. Fortuitously for us, many men endured malaria, yellow fever, and political shenanigans to carved a short-cut so we can keep up the pace and continue quickly about our business.

Of course, even those martyrs suffered unnecessarily in their rush to dig a ditch across the isthmus; had they waited a century or so they could have been done with it by creating an app.

Regardless, to have constructed a canal of this caliber, in this terrain, under those conditions is nothing short of miraculous. The path comprised seventeen different rock formations, six major geologic faults, and five major cores of volcanic rock. With the Panama City skyline and the Bridge of the Americas reflecting the rising sun, only eight hours and 50 miles separated us from the Caribbean Sea.

Panama City at dawn

When Balboa came upon the Pacific Ocean in 1513, he dubbed it the South Sea in deference to the general direction he faced. Six years later, Pedro Arias de Avila founded Panama, named for the Cueva Indian word for “place where many fish are eaten”.

Apparently, Avila considered himself a bigger fish than Balboa, whom he beheaded for nosing in on what he considered to be his dominion. From that time to this, many have considered themselves the rightful heir to Avila’s strategically-positioned realm, and taken steps accordingly to validate their claim.

As we approached the Miraflores locks to begin our ascent into the jungle, reclamation of the canal from Panama was the furthest aspiration from our mind. I was merely relieved that the current owners had provided us a day of cloud cover and periodic light rain. Even in “winter”, temperatures and humidity in this region can be oppressive, one of the many factors that made construction of this passage so forbidding.

Miraflores Locks

Adjacent to these first two locks are a new set, paralleling and avoiding the the Pedro Miguel lock on the northern edge of Miraflores Lake and leading to a longer, wider, and deeper channel for accommodation of larger vessels.

From the Pedro Miguel lock, north-bound ships enter the most imposing hurdle encountered first by French, and subsequently by American, engineers.

The Culebra cut brought the canal across the Continental Divide, requiring excavation and clearance of substantial quantities of obstinate rock.

The valley created after unfathomable trial and effort was protected by a temporary dike that on October 10, 1913 yielded to the press of a button by President Wilson in Washington, DC. A minute later, several hundred charges of dynamite obliterated the dike and made the cut an extension of Gatun Lake.

That lake itself is a marvel. When Gatun Dam was completed, it converted this section of the Chagres River into what was then the largest man-made lake in the world.

It has since yielded the mantle, first to Lake Mead, then to Lake Nasser, but the two-hour journey across it and past former mountain-tops that now function as islands is an impressive spectacle.

Of passing interest along the east shore is the decrepit jail that penned Manuel Noriega during his return to Panama and final years on Earth. His perspective of us from the pokey would no doubt have been less sublime and soothing than was the view of his hoosegow from our deck. Still, we both benefited by complimentary meals, tho’ I assume his were accompanied by a much slower trickle, and poorer quality, of hooch.

The Caribbean Sea opened beyond and below the approaching triple-locks at Gatun. Within an hour, they returned us to sea-level, and we proceeded past the breakwater of Limon Bay.

That we were upon the waves of the Pacific as cream was poured into our morning coffee somehow seems astounding given that we now ride the opposing sea as the olives bound for this evening’s martinis are still ensconced securely in their jar.

Passing ever more rapidly from place to place and year to year, we are humbled by the technology and ingenuity that enable such progress, with no small amount of awe and trepidation at our expanding capabilities and the capricious nature of the Future toward which they accelerate our advancement.

Our eager passage to an uncertain tomorrow must not diminish our appreciation for the fleeting and precious moments of today, for the hole has already been dug into which they will be lowered, to rest for eternity beside the underestimated memories we forged yesterday.

JD