The water in Cundy's Harbor can rise and fall as much as 16 feet, depending upon the time of day, the season, and the moon. Docks, wharfs, and moorings accommodate it, or pay for it if they don’t. The lobstermen arrive each morning around 3, methodically and orderly, going about their business under bright lights shining straight down onto the wharf, frequently shrouded in thick fog.
They mostly tend to their boats and their traps, letting their diesel engines warm up, not saying much to each other, other than good morning, maybe a get well wish intended for a sick loved one at home. They stoically shove off, heading out in the dark at what E.B. White called the hour of the fisherman, the hour of the crow. They’ll be an hour out into the solitude of the sea, likely 12 miles or more offshore, checking their traps starting a half hour before sunrise and stopping not long before it goes down. They'll check dozens to hundreds of traps strung together in strings, pulling them up one by one from the rocky ocean floor, seeing what the sea delivers, keeping the keepers and pitching the smaller ones and the ones with eggs back for another day. The low, steady rumble of their diesel engines provides a grounding soundtrack on their return to the wharf. There they’ll hoist onto the dock the boxes of their daily catch, have them weighed and an accounting made before they refuel their boats for tomorrow then head back to their trucks and drive home, their ebb and flow matching that of the water and their life on it.
Nice work, Richard! These are fun to receive, especially this one, as I have spent a lot of time out there at the hour of the crow.
This sounds like a description of an honest life, in rhythm with the world. Lovely.