Author: wildernessofwaves

I am stepping onto Juniper after traveling through clouds and time. She looks beautiful beyond the layer of coal dust and the tape residue. It’s ninety degrees and my skin doesn’t fit right anymore. Have I gained weight? I feel like a blob shuffling around on tree trunks. I fetch the key out of the...

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Happy New Year. I hope that 2026 is nothing short of dazzling and that every day looks like the cover of a catalog you'd tear out and tack onto the wall. I am about done dogging around in Arkansas. As I write to you, I am by a lake in Hot Springs where crystals grow...

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I’ve been hiding since I got home. I’ve only seen my family and one or two friends. Why am I hiding? I don’t know. I just really don’t want to be seen by strangers at the moment, and almost everybody feels like a stranger. I have a strong desire not to be known or judged...

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I set sail from California six years, three months, and twenty-six days ago. I can’t believe it. All I set out to do was cross the Pacific ocean to Hawaii, but I’ve been living a nomadic life among the stars and saltwater ever since. I don’t even know how to describe with enough accuracy and...

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“When I was a kid, we used to tie cotton to the leg of a dung beetle and fly them around like a kite,” Norman says to me and Magnus. He’s an Afrikaans man with a pot belly. He’s fluent in Zulu, Afrikaans, and English. He grew up in the bush; making fires, catching fish,...

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I would have overslept had your voice not come to me in a dream. Much happened this week. Too much. I have a lot to tell; about the place of miracles and wonder, the hippos of St. Lucia, the bolts in my transmission, the 50-knot blow, the sailors found dead aboard their sailboat off the...

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A hippo attacked and mutilated someone's dinghy. It was red. The person got another red dinghy and the hippo came and ate that one too. Maybe the hippo thinks the dinghy is a big bowl of cherries. People around here tell me that the hippos are meaner than the crocodiles. It's hard to fathom. They...

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If you want to feel like a king or queen, or a blessed member of the royal court, just sail to South Africa. They treat you like you’re something here. They had a ceremony the other night just to present all of the new sailors with a bottle of champagne. The label of the bottles...

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Day 2 on my way to Zululand. There is not much wind at the beginning of the day. Sunny. A yellow jellyfish-like thing just floated past me. I’m sailing across the invisible border that separates Mozambique from South Africa. It’s mystifying that I’ve sailed my 34 ft. boat all the way here. Is this me?...

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I am back on the lam. It's me, Libre, and a French boat captained by a man named Lionel who collects seashells like a bird collects twigs. We all went to shore together on Inhaca Island to pay off the Mozambique official who is a petite woman in a Navy-style skirt uniform. Yes, you heard...

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