Eddie Would Go

Subtitle- Peeing Outside at 2:00 a.m.

I sometimes wondered if humans once had the same navigational abilities as migratory birds, or salmon, or the migratory mammals such as whales. Are we so far removed from that primeval existence and knowledge that such super-human abilities have long since died within us due to lack of use?

A while back there was a rather interesting conversation with a co-worker about the ancient seafarers of the Pacific. The discussion began with the Voyage of the Kon Tiki, a 1947 experiment meant to recreate possible voyages and based on the simplistic theory that the ancients simply plopped a raft into the water and hoped to eventually bump into an island.  That conversation progressed to the 1978 Voyage of the Hokule’a, in which Polynesian mariners set out in a double hulled sailing canoe to prove that the ancients could and did traverse the vast ocean without modern navigational gear.

The Voyage of the Hokule’a proved that ancient Polynesians navigated the Pacific Ocean relying solely on cues offered by the heavens above and the watery world about them.

Present on that 1978 voyage was Polynesian waterman Eddie Aikau. Eddie was the first lifeguard at Waimea Bay on the island of Oahu and is crediting with plucking hundreds of doomed souls from the unforgiving waters, never losing one on his watch. His prowess as a surfer earned him recognition as a pioneer of big wave surfing, his humble nature was the stuff that legends are made of.

When the Hokule’a began to take water, it was Eddie who volunteered to go for help, paddling away from the stricken craft never to be seen again. Perhaps the gods recognized that a being such as Eddie was best taken while in his prime and in his primal environment rather than to be left to live past the thrill of living. Eddie was only 31 years old.

Having had some close calls in the water and having the dumb luck to live and to tell about it has allowed me to reach a ripe age. Ripe enough to experience a certain ritual that occurs for most every man of a certain ripe age-being awakened out of sound sleep to urinate. For the urban dweller that would entail stumbling down the hallway in the middle of the night, but for those of us living in the woods it involves stepping outside, 365.

Each night I stumble out and if the sky is clear glance up at the stationary star Polaris and observe its nightly Beltane dance with Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Like Groundhog Day but at night; stumble outside in the fog of half sleep, North Star, Big Dipper, Little Dipper, rotational dance, pee. Repeat the next night.

There was never an epiphany while gazing up at that celestial orchestration that my location was 46.42-90.23 and that it was, say, 2:00 a.m. But without having to consciously process it, while doing my business and gazing up towards the heavens above in a sleep induced fog, I knew that in, say, 2 hours and 45 minutes my alarm would go off simply by recognizing the positions of those stars.

While peeing outside at 2:00 a.m. and subliminally relearning a minute, long-lost observational skill is trivial compared to the epic and dramatic and adventurous Voyage of the Hokule’a, these middle of the night calls of nature offered a microscopic glimpse into how our absorptive minds could relearn the primeval skills we no longer use and utilize the information that nature and the universe hides in plain sight.

And thinking about the wonder of nature and the Voyage of the Hokule’a also got me thinking more about Eddie Aikau, and his measure as a man and how he might fit into today’s world given the opportunity to do so.

The pop culture phrase “Eddie Would Go” is based on the life of Eddie Aikau.

There are two stories of the coining of the phrase, both probably true. The second is that at the inaugural memorial Quicksilver Eddie Aikau Invitational, surfer Mark Foo reverently replied “Eddie would go” when questions arose about whether to paddle out or not.

The first had its roots in the humble Hawaiian man who lived in a shack near a Chinese graveyard and was a lifeguard at Waimea Bay. Treated as a second-class citizen owing to his pureblood Hawaiian appearance and pushed aside by a flood of wealthy tourists and vacationers, Eddie none-the-less saved the lives of some of the very people who marginalized him and were gentrifying him out of his god given homeland.

During Eddie’s watch not a soul was lost to the treacherous waters of Waimea Bay. There were no litmus tests required before his saving a life. Rich or poor, Kama’aina or Haole, kind or cruel, embracing or racist, it did not matter. A pompous bigot would be rescued just as readily as an innocent child who simply got in too deep. Over five hundred souls were saved by the humble man. By example and deed, Eddie Aikau personified bravery and dignity and the spirit of aloha.

 If there was a being in need Eddie would go.

We could use more of that today.