It took me a little while to decide how to organize the letters that come in responding to articles. Our first round of Mail Sack was a grab bag of letters, but after some thought on readability, I like grouping the notes and letters on a topic on a single page which leads to hearing them as voices in a conversation. I like the idea that this particular conversation extends all the way to Sweden.
Yesterday, I stopped by the hangar of a friend who is beginning to pack up his Catalina 22 for an extended sail to the Bahamas. He wasn’t home, but I hung out for a little bit and looked over his equipment with a twinge of envy for his pending adventure. You can learn a lot about a person’s priorities by checking out the stuff they have prepped before such a trip. Among the cartons of Marlboro reds and cases of Bud was his dog’s life jacket, a Mosin-Nagant and a copy of Sterling Hayden’s book.
“If it would be appropriate to be personal, here would be a good reason for it. You and this Howard Hill:ish buccaneer do reach down deep with your Call of the Wild. Perhaps one should be sad for those who cannot, or will not allow themselves, to feel it…..Sten”
William, I just love this stuff… what an atmospheritude you got going there! Today, Sterling Hayden, and all of your other philosophical nuggets… I keep finding more stuff in my Corvair Manual every time I re-read it. It’s as much a philosophical read as it is a “flight engine instruction guide,” and I’d rather be involved with this effort, to build and fly a machine of my own making, powered by something I know every single little detail about, (with help, of course!) than just about anything else. It just amazes me that you are doing what you are doing, that SOMEONE out there is doing it, in this crazy world of screwed-up values and priorities… THANK YOU. Life is good.
“Yeh! on the Hayden piece – He was just one of several in those gentler years who took their wanderlust and dissatisfactions to the serenity of the oceans… Tangvald, Moitessier, Tenia Aebi and more recently Roger Taylor, etc., etc., (and many other wanderers who never wanted their names in print) all were cut from similar cloth to Hayden in varying degrees…”
