Here be dragons

Casting net for the future

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

— Albert Camus

Our destination was Hula Bay flats near the Gandy in Tampa Bay. We were after whitebait using a 10-foot cast net and a small john boat. Frank set in the rear and wordlessly paddled us out to the large grass flat. His skin was the color of copper, lines etched deep in his face from more than 60 years out in the Florida sun. He wore a simple sleeveless white T-shirt, yellowed from sweat; no hat; and stained brown pants, held up by a faded black leather belt. Today, he would be my guide and teacher. I was still a teenage boy but ready to learn.

The morning sun made the water glisten hues of green and blue, I was thrilled. But my mind was traveling; I thought of the ancient Greeks, who had no concept of blue — instead they called the sky black, and the ocean was wine colored. I started to mention this to Frank, but stopped short. I was there to be there, to observe, to embrace and to connect.

Frank stopped paddling to scan the water for tell-tell ripples of water caused by the whitebait as they skim the surface of the water. Skillfully, he guided us over to the preferred spot and pulled out his cast net. Like a lithe dancer, he coiled the line that attaches to the net in one of his hands. Next, he put part of the lead line in his mouth and — placing half of the net on one side of him and half on the other — he threw a perfect circle that hit the water all at once like a pancake. “Now, you try,” he grinned. For the rest of the day, that grin never left his face as I made one errant throw after another, my tosses looking more like scrambled eggs than pancakes.

My inner turmoil over trying to master this technique contrasted vividly with Frank’s serenity. Patiently folding the net yet again for me, Frank was demonstrating what the psychologist Rollo May called the complimentary forces of love and will by reaching out to influence me, molding, forming a respect and love for this vast canvas of nature he had long merged with. To be part of it in a respectful and disciplined way — just like the fish and the birds that surrounded us. We were all the same — some of us simply knew their roles better than the others. What he wanted to teach me was that this is only possible, in an inner sense, if one opens oneself at the same time to the influence of the other. This I did.

After several hours, I finally mastered the pancake. Frank slipped out of the boat in waist deep water to pull us over to one last grass flat to investigate. Nestled in the mud laid a giant sting ray, buried in the sand, and Frank inadvertently stepped directly on its back. It measured at least 4 feet across and 5 feet in length — looking every bit like a sea monster from my childhood stories. Lifting its large wings, the stingray lifted Frank straight up in the water.

With my eyes wide in amazement, Frank “surfed” the sting ray for a couple of feet before he effortlessly stepped off. Together, we silently watched the behemoth

glide away.

An ancient globe built in 1510, called the Hunt-Lennox globe, used the term, “Here be dragons,” to show dangerous or unexplored territories. Frank was showing me, that out in the sea, we were all just part of the rhythm of life, there was nothing to be feared —

just respect your place in it and it will respect you.

My grandfather died more than 40 years ago. I asked my grandmother for just one thing after his funeral: that worn black leather belt. I keep it to remind me of what I learned that glittering day. For in every act of love and will, wrote Rollo May, we mold ourselves and our world simultaneously — and, yes, also a young teenage boy taught to embrace the future one fine day in Tampa Bay.