DESTINATION:
HOME
by Elsie Hulsizer
I felt the ship dock with a gentle bump, then the engine shut down. A moment later, shouts reverberated through the metal hull, “Home! We’re at Home!” I lay in my bunk in the dark, puzzled. Home — for both me and the ship — was Seattle, and we were somewhere south of the Tacoma Narrows on our way to Carr Inlet for the night. How could we be home? It was the mid 1960s and I was a student on the RV ONAR, a small oceanographic research ship belonging to the University of Washington. The voice I had heard belonged to the ONAR’s mate, Popp. Crew on the University’s research vessels were known for the practical jokes they played on students and I knew better than to rise to their provocation. I’d find out where we were in the morning. I rolled over and went back to sleep. When I walked into the galley the next morning, a small group 48º NORTH
of students and technicians were drinking coffee at the table as they studied a chart of southern Puget Sound. I leaned in between two students and found Carr Inlet. Several small coves were on the inlet’s western shore. One, Von Geldern Cove, showed a hatched area, labeled “Home.” So, Home was a town. In answer to my unspoken question, one of the crew members shrugged, “It was a utopian community,” he said. “That’s all I know.” I opened the cabin door and walked out on deck. Worn wooden planks of an old dock stretched toward shore where a small house snuggled up against a bulkhead. Sunshine lit up trees, gardens and houses. This looked like a place that demanded exploring, but I knew we had a full day of oceanographic sampling ahead of us. From the town’s peaceful appearance, I would not have guessed that Home had once been called, “a festering nest of poisonous anarchists.”
40
JANUARY 2021
