Stricken

I startle awake in the middle of the night suddenly, bumping my head painfully on the low ceiling above my bunkbed. A claustrophobic dream spins into a waking panic. I suddenly realize how confined I’ve been for 5 days and nights. A tiny bed, narrow hallways, a small galley three times a day so filled with people that we move like sliding tile puzzle pieces when we want a glass of juice or to excuse ourselves from the dinner table, sequencing after a hesitation to move through the few open spaces available to us. I think: even in the open polar sea and on the Antarctic shore, how I am plugged into a tiny kayak, confined in 4 layers of fabric and wedged into a narrow plastic tube, or on shore, scraping along in oversized boots along narrow strips of prescribed land, or squeezed 5 on a side on a small rubber Zodiac, shoulder to shoulder on the nearly overloaded boats. And, casting forward, I see that I will be stuck in this world for another 6 days and nights. How will I get through it?

It fades slowly as I waken further, and I realize that the ocean deep offers something besides fear: the idea of the open seas as psychic relief from the closeness and claustrophobia of life on a boat.