Transcription of Oceans and Islands #25
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Kelsey: There’s something about the waterfront, especially in Maine that I cannot stay away from. I feel much more balanced here. I feel much more of myself here.
I go to the ocean for comfort. I go to the ocean for ideas. I don’t know what it is exactly, but there is this push and pull to it. I just feel better around it.
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Dr. Lisa: Good morning. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Power and Podcasting, Show Number 25. This is “Oceans and Islands” airing on Sunday, March 4, on WLOB Radio Portland, 1310 AM, streaming online WLOBRadio.com. With me today to talk about why we’re going into “Oceans and Islands” is my co-host Genevieve Morgan. Hi Genevieve.
Genevieve: Good morning Lisa.
Dr. Lisa: Today we’re going to be talking to Peter Ralston of the Ralston Gallery and also the Island Institute, David Turin of David’s Restaurant and also owner of a surf shop at Scarborough Beach and Kelsey Hartley of Hardly Marine Services, who does work with the MS Society. You were asking me earlier, Genevieve, “Why are we doing the oceans and islands?” Because it’s a health show and I’m sure there are going to be other people who have that same question. I think we came up with some good reasons.
Genevieve: I think we did, too. I think anyone who is thinking about taking a April break to the beach knows what the power of the ocean or even of going to an island and lying on a beach and swimming knows how health, beneficial it is.
Dr. Lisa: Maine is particularly, oceans are particularly relevant. Islands are particularly relevant, also, to the people who live in Maine. I know that when I went to the University of Vermont there was an enormous … Actually everybody knows this … There’s an enormous lake there. It’s called Lake Champlain. I was born in Burlington. My dad went to medical school there. I went to medical school there. People will say to me, “There’s a big lake. Why is it that you need to live in Maine? Why couldn’t you just live in Burlington and be a doctor there?” Every time I leave the oceanside and I go inland, I can stay there for a period of time, but then I’m always drawn back. I always need that ocean fix. I suspect there are many people who live in Maine who feel the same.
Genevieve: I do. I think there is a landscape of your heart and everyone has an internal landscape that draws them. Some people it’s the desert. Some people it’s the mountains. I think for you and I, it’s been the ocean.
Dr. Lisa: This is true. I believe in an earlier show we talked about John O’ Donohue, who had this Celtic mentality also was a Catholic priest, he died a few years back and he talked about the landscape of the heart and the landscape of spirituality. I believe we are all drawn in some way back to the ocean and for health reasons we’re drawn back to the ocean in fact, too.
Genevieve: We are mostly saltwater, isn’t that right?
Dr. Lisa: We are mostly saltwater. When you think about where you come from and the mother’s womb and that dark saline atmosphere and floating about that’s where you start.
Genevieve: Primordial sea.
Dr. Lisa: Right. You start as a little tadpole. Sometimes we look at the ocean and we think, we aren’t necessarily thinking about life, but the ocean is a place that nourishes life of all different shapes, bigger, smaller, even the seaweed that washes up on the shore, it’s full of life. It’s a life soup that’s out there.
Genevieve: You talk often about energy and how health is energy and the ocean is, I think David Turin will talk about this, the ocean is just this gigantic source of energy. It’s all this potential energy and kinetic energy and somehow when you are walking beside it or swimming in it, you feel that essential energy that feels bigger than yourself.
Dr. Lisa: This is very true. This is I think one of the reasons why as much as Lake Champlain is wonderful and I certainly respect anybody who wants to live next to it and people who love the mountains, this is why for me I think I feel pulled back to the ocean is that there is this shifting and changing. You can see an enormous distance between the height of the tides and the low tides. There is this change that takes place and even in the rivers. I have had a medical practice seated by a river for many years now and I think it’s been a healing experience for my patients to be able to watch the waters flow back to the sea.
Genevieve: And hear it …
Dr. Lisa: And to hear it.
Genevieve: Tinkling. It seems to me that even if people don’t self-identify as being particularly religious or spiritual, being around a water source taps into something deeper and connects them with a sense of something larger than themselves, a natural rhythm or a natural cycle that’s very elemental, obviously.
Dr. Lisa: I would definitely agree with that. I’ve seen this in my own life, especially in the last few years where I’ve undergone a lot of shifting and changing in my medical practice and my family and my relationship with my former husband. What happens is if I get too caught up in the day to day, all I need to do is take a run down to the ocean at sunrise or drive to the ocean at sunset and I live in Yarmouth right near the ocean and I’m able to reboot. There is a mental, and emotional rebooting that takes place.
I know that I’m not the only person who experiences this because when I’m sitting at the Falmouth Town Landing or at Cousins Island Beach there are other cars there with other people there or people walking on the beach and even this time of year of people going to Scarborough Beach and Popham.
I think there’s a whole cadre of us that are being drawn back to the ocean for its healing powers.
Genevieve: I want to jump to the “Islands” part of our show, which is now we have now talked about why the ocean is related to wellness, but “Islands,” because our show is about connectivity. When you think about islands it’s very isolated and we think, “Well, no man is an island,” but we’re doing a show that’s also including islands. How is that related?
Dr. Lisa: I think that speaks to a slightly different connectivity and we had an individual from the Maine Island Institute on a show a few weeks back. He described this sense that you can go to an island and feel as if you are the first person ever to have set foot there. This is something that we all need to have in our lives is the ability to connect back to something bigger, absent of other people.
Genevieve: Like an adventurous explorer side of our personality.
Dr. Lisa: That’s right. I think in Maine there is this interesting thing that happens on islands as well that they foster a sense of community that really is unique to our state. Actually, Northern Maine has this too. They have little pockets of land which are essentially population islands and people work together.
Genevieve: You can’t survive unless you work together.
Dr. Lisa: That’s right. You can’t survive. You can’t function as an individual unless you function within the group and this is something that is lost in other parts of the country, other parts of the world.
Genevieve: What you’re saying is perhaps someone living in a high-rise city apartment in the midst of population of millions might be more isolated than an individual living on an island with a population of 50?
Dr. Lisa: Yeah. I think islands connect us, whether they’re empty or whether they have a few people on them. I think they do cost us to reflect on what it means to be connected in a bigger way.
Genevieve: It’s an interesting theme because it means that there is a sense of interiority and aloneness that feeds into connectivity, both in going and looking at the water and walking by the ocean and connecting to something larger. Also, that idea of going and visiting an island or living on an island and feeling that insular sense, but then needing everybody else
Dr. Lisa: I agree. I don’t think that we’re going to need to say too much more about this. People just listen to our show. Most people who live in Maine and even if you don’t live in Maine, if you have been to Maine you are going to resonate with the people who come on and they talk about “Oceans and Islands.” Just give us a listen, be inspired and let us know what you think.
Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is pleased to have our Wellness Innovations Segment each week sponsored by the University of New England. This week our “Oceans and Islands” theme show, we feature sea urchins as a wellness innovation. Researchers are using the sea urchins to study and understand diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and muscular dystrophy. Although they are invertebrates, the creatures share a common ancestor with humans and have more than 7000 of the same genes. With a complete map of their DNA, scientists can learn how to treat and prevent these diseases in humans better. For more information on this go to sciencedaily.com or go to our Dr. Lisa.org website. For more information on the University of New England go to UNE.edu.
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Dr. Lisa: Today’s theme as we mentioned previously is “Oceans and Islands.” We are fortunate to have Peter Ralston from the Ralston Gallery in Rockport, cofounder of the Island Institute here with us in the studio today. Hello Peter.
Peter: Good morning.
Dr. Lisa: Why are you so interested in islands? Why did you found something called the Island Institute?
Peter: Great question. I grew up in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, on the Brandywine River and right in front of our house the Wyeth family, Andy and Betsy Wyeth, owned a mill there and the dams that damned up the river to provide water to the mill made islands. These islands were 150 years old, artificial islands in the river, but they were magical places as kids.
As a kid and then in Florida with my grandparents we would poke around on boats and islands have always been really really magical places to me. There is that line. Who wrote the poem … “To have slept on an island, your life is changed forever. Once you have slept on an island you will never be the same again,” and there’s so much truth to it. I fetch up in Maine in 1978 totally from Hawaii and because of the friends who invited me here they had islands. They knew exactly what they were doing. They knew they were baiting me in. They knew about my island thing. I got to see some really extraordinary islands up close and personal. It all took me back to …
Here I am from away in my late 20s and the arrogance through the spirit and the energy of youth and so forth, but I was seeing the place having traveled a lot as a photojournalist, seeing a place that wasn’t really destroyed yet. I was seeing a place that wasn’t so irreparably changed like so many other places that I have seen and we’ve all seen beautiful places that have been ruined that the community, the heart, pulse, the mojo is gone and it’s all been suburbanized and homogenized. I had the naïveté, but certainly the optimism and the hope and Phillip Conkling, the two of us started the Institute. We met. He was from Nyack, New York, and like me, had seen his natal home totally trashed. You go over the Tappanzee Bridge, there’s Nyack.
Here we are in Maine back in real community and to me it was a homecoming.
It was really a homecoming. We got together over island work and it really took off from there. It was going from one island where we had very specific interests. This is off of Port Clyde and then starting to see other islands and then going to these uninhabited islands where you’d find seller holds, where you’d find rock walls, beautiful walls in the middle of 70, 80, 100-year-old spruce forests. The question inevitably becomes who was there? What were these communities? Then we learned that there were once 300 year round island communities off the coast of Maine. Today there are 14 or 15, depending on how you count them. If there had been that sort of loss in any natural community, snail darters or spotted owls, there are millions of federal dollars to protect that community and so forth.
Human communities, certainly out of sight, out of mind communities don’t get that kind of aid, don’t typically engender and that’s the economic reality. That’s the way it goes. All of that if this makes any sense, all of that comes together with us thinking, “Maybe we can actually do something.” What we saw happen elsewhere, not just our home towns, but all along the Atlantic coast of the United States there are very, there really are no other places like left, like we’ve got here in Maine, where there’s a coast-wide maritime culture still very much intact.
Dr. Lisa: The Island Institute was founded to do what?
Peter: Help sustain the year round working island and inevitably, the island communities, but also those communities at shore that are tied to the communities that sustain the communities. That’s a pretty broad statement and we didn’t constrain ourselves too much. We’re not a land preservation organization. We’re not a recreational organization, but it was about helping these little communities that have been here for a long time, but that now more than ever are really …
Of course, we were saying this back in ’83 and it’s just as true today now more than ever and certainly more now than even in ’83, the pressure is just so intense, the pressure that would wash away these communities where people have lived for 13 generations. There are families that have finished off the same shore side, the same wharfs and so forth for 13 generations in some places.
Genevieve: This brings us to the “Oceans” part of our show which is that the health of the oceans helps sustain some of these economies, these small island economies and that the over-fishing and the pollutants in the ocean are slowly degrading their livelihoods.
Peter: We’re lucky here in Maine. Pollution, with a few hotspots, is not a major issue. It’s management of the fisheries and governance of fisheries and what has been called the “tragedy of the commons.” Here’s the ocean. That’s the common.
It’s a common resource. If you look at the Maine Lobster Fishery, which is one of the most successful self-regulated fisheries in the world, it’s great. These guys, not to be gender inappropriate, but mostly guys who are out there doing the fishing, these communities have been really smart about regulating and making it work. Inevitably, state regulations, federal regulations come in, but the lobster fishery is very much a success story. When you talk to a fishermen last year it was absolutely a year of record landings. They never had landings like that.
At the same time, bait is way up and there are environmental and fishing regulatory reasons for that. Salt’s way up. Diesel is way up and that’s beyond anybody’s control. The lobster fish that is what holds the working harbors together. If the lobster fishery were to go south here in Maine, it would be a true tragedy. It would be a game changer. The offshore fisheries that’s a whole different story. That’s much more of a management issue and over-fishing. Over-fishing including extra national, other countries’ fleets coming in and very complex stuff. Indeed fisheries was one of the things the Institute has become very involved with here in Maine and then almost by default elsewhere. What we have learned here is what can be applied to islands here, there are lessons we can learn and share and that’s what community is. You are learning and sharing.
Shelley Pingray, who of course is from North Haven, Shelley’s great line years when we were starting the Institute. Shelley and I are pretty tight. Shelley’s great line then and it’s been a mantra throughout is, “Islands are really laboratories of community, models of community.”
Dr. Lisa: It’s the microcosm representing the macrocosm? It’s this whole sense that something that something smaller can represent something bigger
Peter: Yeah.
Dr. Lisa: … and be useful as to be studied?
Peter: Yeah. If you really look at it … Who was it, Joni Mitchell sang, “This little green garden planet in the darkness of space …” Here is life change for everybody when we first saw that Apollo image from the moon looking back at the earth. Here is this little garden planet, it’s like an island.
Dr. Lisa: You’re talking about financial, economic, use, sustainability. You are talking about a lot of really big issues. One of the things that fascinates me about your interaction with the Island Institute is how you have drawn people in to support the Island Institute and that comes from your background in photojournalism.
Peter: I think what’s really drawn people to the Institute’s work is passion for place.
Dr. Lisa: Some of this “passion for place,” you cannot deny the impact of your photography and the photography of the islands in bringing people to support your organization.
Peter: That has been part of it. We were really lucky. When we started the Institute Phillip and I thought, “Well, we’ll publish.” Philip’s a wonderful writer and I knew … You remember film. I used to know what to do with film. We thought we would publish. It was Betsy Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth’s wife, who really encouraged us and it was a brilliant moment for us. She said, “Look, if you’re going to publish, if you’re going to spread the word and so forth, don’t just do some mimeograph, self-congratulatory thing.” She said, “Really, really do it right. Philip, you’re a wonderful writer. Peter you know what you’re doing with the camera. Do it first rate,” and thus was born that moment was born the Island Journal and we used that. Year one we had zero members. We had two contributors and we were off and running. We did things that combining stories, telling stories and sharing information, sharing lessons would grow awareness.
When we first went to Augusta, there was actually, so help me God, there was a state legislator in Maine, here we are, and they remarked to Philip, “You mean there are people that live on those islands all year?” Truly out of sight, out of mind. The year round population is something like 5000 now. Wicked independence and ultimately, intellectually has to be interdependence. It’s a great mix, which is why these communities are so intense and everybody does know everybody and everything about everybody. If I were to drop this bottle now on an island, they’d know about it on the other side of the island before it hit the ground. That completely freaks out some people, but others, I’m a small town boy, I love it close and intimate like that.
Dr. Lisa: I have two relatives who live on an island, different islands, but I have grown accustomed now to their habit of stopping by. They just stop by, no warning, but the door is open. The doors should be open because that’s what it’s like in their community. It doesn’t matter. They don’t expect you to look a certain way or have food on the table or anything like that, but it’s just social and it’s a time to be together. That’s a really interesting part of community there that here in the city we go out to meet our friends and we make a plan, but on the islands you can just stop by at any time. You have a problem, you have a celebration, you just share it.
Peter: I was a little in the last minute mode when I was calling some of these people and I had been told, “You’ll probably want to visit so and so,” and I knew some of them, but some were first time for me. As you know, I’m chatty and I show up with cameras and all this stuff, but I’ve been around long enough that I feel pretty comfortable talking to anybody. I called on one 80-year-old woman …
I’m sorry. She would kill me. 78-year-old woman down there who’s had quite a tough life, quite a tough life and I was told she’s not going to be all together comfortable about this. I’ve got a new friend for life.
This little piece of porcelain that I now carry, she gave this to me and she believes that God leads her to everything she finds on the beaches. Her line, so I’m talking to her. I’m halfway to the ferry saying, “By the way I’m coming and can I see you and might I call on you and I promise it won’t be too painful.” Her line was, “Come aboard.” It was just so beautiful. I thought that’s it. “Come aboard.”
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Dr. Lisa: You own a gallery and as you know for centuries Maine islands have inspired great artists, great American artists all around including the Wyeths. Do you think that that has something to do with it, that feeling, that spiritual …? Why are Maine Islands so inspiring to the nation’s artists?
Peter: That’s a great question. Certainly, the first, the duh factor on that one is they’re just so beautiful, but I really think that’s the half of it. Speaking for myself and yeah, if you even scratch American Art history they’ve all been here. It really is amazing. There’s the light. The light is flat out different, always been very keenly aware of light. I think light was my first word. Light is how I make my living. I write in light. The photography light is different. It’s unique. We get the old, “Wait five minutes, the weather’s going to change.” There are all these fluctuations and that’s dramatic and exciting and edgy and wonderful and thank God we have the winters we do. Yes, I’m quite partial to the winters.
It’s the people, too, and I think it’s the culture. Whereas, we can say today,
“It’s all gone everywhere else.” Back in the 50s things had changed dramatically, culture. Resource-driven cultures are very disadvantaged. You can’t hold back the tide of agribusiness, big business and the homogenization of the box stores and all that. There’s just no going back on that in America. There really is and
I say this almost nervously because, at all cost to avoid caricatures or stereotyping, but there is an independent spirit. There is a spirit and an ethic and a mojo and a community.
These are not easy places. There is danger. Anytime you’re fooling around on boats and going back and forth and there’s fog and there’s night, there’s winter and there’s ice, all of it, not to mention those pesky ledges, it adds something.
I think there really is a quality in these communities that you simply don’t find in other places. That’s true today. What artists of 100 years ago were finding,
I think if you go back and look at what some of the great ones were painting then, even then, a 100 years ago they were on to that. They got it. It was present.
Dr. Lisa: You have spoken to us about a lot of very profound themes. I know we could spend a lot of time talking to you, a lot more time talking to you, but we appreciate your coming in and spending time with us today. Maybe we’ll have you back again in the future.
Peter: My arm is very easily twisted by the pair of you. If anybody is interested, I told you before my initials aren’t PRF for nothing. I’m shameless.
Dr. Lisa: Yes, I was going to ask you how can people find out more about you, what you do and the Island Institute?
Peter: It’s easy. Of course, we all have our little iPads and smartphones and computers and the Institute really has a fascinating mission and website, which is islandinstitute.org. Then the almost as fascinating and interesting Ralston Gallery site is Ralstongallery.com and I have got lots and lots of pictures there. I’m now doing a thing. I’m finally coming out of my shy mode.
Dr. Lisa: Yes. I could tell you are very shy.
Peter: I am. Actually, I don’t know if you guys have seen it, but I’m telling one story a week. I decided for a year I would tell the story behind images, primarily driven by the fact that I get tired of hearing, “What are the sheep doing in the boat?” You know that one …
Dr. Lisa: Now you are just going to pre-empt that by telling people what the sheep are doing in the boat?
Peter: Yeah. They will end up with 52 stories.
Dr. Lisa: This is on your website?
Peter: Yeah, print of the week.
Dr. Lisa: Very good. Thank you so much for coming in and talking to us Peter.
Peter: Surely my pleasure.
Dr. Lisa: Our next guest is an individual who along with his wife has come to be a friend.
This individual is a big supporter of the events that go on through Maine Magazine. This is David Turin and I am going to allow Genevieve Morgan to interview him for Maine Magazine Minutes.
Genevieve: Thanks Lisa. David, we did a great interview about six months ago for Maine …
David: That was super fun.
Genevieve: … It was super fun for Maine Magazine. You have a great career as a restaurateur. The thing that actually gets your heart going in the morning is surfing.
David: I like to joke that the restaurant is my hobby and the surfing thing is my real job, but reality would catch up with me probably if I said that.
Genevieve: We’re on the show now “Oceans and Islands,” so let’s talk a little bit about the oceans because you weren’t born near an ocean.
David: I was born near Lake Erie, which is until you really see the ocean, you think that’s a big body of water and then you got Lake Erie is green or mud brown depending on your vantage point I guess. No, I grew up pretty far from the ocean, didn’t really see it until I was about 16 and then started surfing as soon as I had the chance.
Genevieve: Then how did surfing change your life?
David: I guess it relaxed me and I found out that going surfing every day is a phenomenal way to just be active in your environment. It probably saved my life, truthfully, honestly. That’s a pretty big change, right? Staying alive, yeah.
Genevieve: You have a uniquely stressful work environment.
David: That’s what people say and being in the restaurant business I’m coming up on 29 years this year as a restaurant owner.
Genevieve: Your restaurants are …?
David: I own David’s Restaurant in Portland and David’s 388 in South Portland, numbers eight and nine in my restaurant career. I only own two now, but yeah it’s a busy job. There’s always a lot of moving parts and there’s a lot of people involved. It requires a lot of time. I’ve heard people say that it’s a very stressful job so having pretty much only been involved in that career for a long time I don’t know by comparison, but I’d take that as true.
Genevieve: You also have a surf camp.
David: I do.
Genevieve: It’s one of the oldest in Maine.
David: I think it is. I think we started the concept in Maine, which it was really an idea
that I stole from California because they were running surf camps for kids out there for a long time. I actually went to a surf camp in San Clemente, probably
I don’t know 17, 18 years ago and they had surfing camp for kids and then they had one session of summer for adults. I went and slept on the beach in San Clemente State Park and went surfing every day and lived in a tent. We went to and from different breaks into what do they call it a …? One of those travel trailer things and it was fantastic. I met a bunch of people. I’ve been surfing around the world with one of them, been to Fiji and South Africa and Costa Rica and all these places. I made some friends.
After doing that a couple times I thought, “I could do this.” It really started by accident. I had a couple of restaurants in Massachusetts. I sold them, honestly because the stress was getting to me. I was driving back and forth and almost drove my car off the road one night about 2:30 in the morning after doing a late, late party. I said, “You know what? I got to get rid of this. I’m going to die on the road here. Those rumble strips saved my life.” I thought, “Oh, I’ll teach a little surfing,” after I sold the restaurant. Next thing you know the camp just evolved and we ended up with a real business out of the thing.
Genevieve: The great thing about surfing is it actually gets you into the water Maine, which can be cold and off-putting to some people, but water, especially ocean swimming is very therapeutic. Can anyone surf? Can anyone learn how to surf?
David: I’d say that the range of people who we’ve had as candidates have ranged from kids as small as five and six-years-old, who we don’t really take in our camp, but we have taught some lessons for really little kids. We’ve had had actually quite a number of autistic kids come. I think that the reason they bring them is because for some reason people with autism, they find that the water is a very soothing place. I don’t know a lot about this so I could be completely wrong, but
I understand that autistic kids like to swim. They like being in the water. We’ve had a number of autistic kids who were relatively high functioning and then through the age groups I think the oldest surf candidate we had was my stepmother, who was 79 I think the last time that she went.
Genevieve: I’m sure she’s thrilled that you just outed her on radio with her age there.
David: Actually, she’s quite proud of it because she gets a discount for skiing as a senior citizen and she gets carded. Now she’s 83 and she’s really happy that way down it’s, “I really am 83,” because most of the ski areas, they’ll give you a free ticket when you’re over 75 so she’s like, “Oh yes. I am yes.”
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Genevieve: Let’s go back a little bit to this idea of surfing saving your life because you’re not the first person I have heard tell me that.
David: It’s so trite, “Come on dude, man. It will change your life, try surfing.” It’s really true, yeah.
Genevieve: I actually think you were somebody who can articulate why that is the case because you go out there almost every day now, right?
David: Yeah.
Genevieve: Still to this day and you get on your board. I know that you’ve said to me before in the interview that sometimes in Maine sometimes it’s flat even. You’re not catching the waves. That’s not actually what it’s about.
David: It’s awfully nice when you go out there and surf. It’s perfect, but it doesn’t really matter where you go. The surf is not perfect all the time. If you follow the contest circuit, most surf contest are run in really pretty bad surf, honestly. When there’s great surf, even in the best places it’s not the common fact.
It’s about being out there with the ocean and the peace and the quiet and maybe a couple of your buddies. I don’t know why exactly, but it’s really hard to think about much else when you’re out there doing that. Sometimes, a lot of times, especially in the summers it’s not our big surf season in terms of the size of the waves, there’s a lot of times when you go out and there are knee high waves or smaller and you’re just out on the board and you’re paddling around.
Now stand up paddle boarding has really caught on and that doesn’t require any surf at all. Most people really just want to paddle on flat water. I don’t know maybe an acupuncturist, basically could explain that there’s got to be some energy that flows ions that come up through your … I don’t know why. It really washes you. It’s the rinse cycle. It really is.
Genevieve: You’re right. You’re absolutely right and we have actually talked about this. There’s this kidney energy and the kidney is associated with the element of water. Water can simultaneously be a source of fear and a source of wisdom.
If you’re surfing and you’re learning to interact with the water then it becomes a source of wisdom and nourishment and less a source of fear so you’re absolutely right that this rinse cycle, it’s not anything you have imagined.
David: Yeah. I don’t know how to articulate it, but you just struck on something that
I think is really interesting because you say, “It’s a source of fear and energy.”
Genevieve: And wisdom.
David: And wisdom. That’s what you said “wisdom.” As a surfer, most surfers who’ve spent any time surfing will tell you a story about when they got really scared because the ocean is tremendously powerful. It’s sad and shocking when you hear stories about every now and then some real expert pro surfer will die, clearly not doing what we do at our camp. It’s a different element of the sport than obviously, what we’re doing with the 12-year-old kids. There is a power and there is an unknown factor and every surfer I know will talk about a time when the adrenaline was flowing, they’re scared, but there’s also this tremendous comfort in it. It’s very, very hard to describe.
Genevieve: We start out as aquatic creatures before we’re born in the womb so coming out and then going back … I have always thought that …
David: Was the water warmer in that environment? That’s the one thing …
Genevieve: I think it was 98.9.
David: Yeah, there you go. That’s one of the things we have to get used to with what we’re doing here is the water is colder. The gear is important. That’s one thing.
Genevieve: Do you think this whole having to deal with the fear and gaining the wisdom and the rinse cycle, do you think this goes back to the “saving your life” element that you’re describing?
David: That’s a really interesting question. Thinking back, I think it’s sort of a scary thing that every young surfer seems to go through because you get a sense of invincibility. You start to catch waves and you start to get a little bit good at it and you’re starting to get proficient and you think there’s nothing you can’t do, until the ocean slaps you around a little bit and then you have that … Almost every surfer I know will tell a story about when they were learning and they thought they were Superman. Nothing can stop me and then they get knocked down and get held under or whatever.
Yeah, I think there is probably something. There’s a connection between the water and maybe a little bit of fear and the pleasure. The thing about surfing, people who haven’t surfed that don’t get and I’m a skier. Snowboard is particularly tough about this. Surfing and snowboarding are a lot alike, right? The thing is that the mountain doesn’t move. It’s static. When you go out and you’re skiing or you’re snowboarding, the terrain is there and you are moving around it. The ocean is such a dynamic environment and there is every single ride that you ever take will be different than any other one. I suppose it’s true to a lesser degree with a downhill sport.
Having that that thing move around you and being part of it and then there’s an interaction that happens between you and the wave where you change the wave, the wave changes you. There’s something that’s really beautiful and poetic and sometimes it’s beautiful. Sometimes it’s scary. There’s a lot of senses going on.
Genevieve: The little bit of surfing that I have done when I was doing research for the article, there is a lot of effort and then there’s a moment of no effort when the wave energy blends with your own and for me it was a nano second.
David: It’s funny because talking about surfing, people say, “Oh, it must be great for your legs.” You say, “Well, the amount of time you actually spend standing up on a surfboard is really small compared to the amount of time that you spend paddling,” so surfing is really great for your arms. It’s funny because now there’s the whole sport of stand up paddling, which you are standing up all the time and people report very quickly. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, my core, it was really so hard.”
You are standing on a moving object so all these little micro muscles and fibers are firing to keep your balance and you do that for an hour or so and you come back and people are like, “They’re all stiff in here,” in their very core, the top of their thighs. I’m like, “How did that happen? You didn’t do anything?” I was like, “Yes you did.” When you’re wave surfing it’s a whole different thing because all that work to get out there and you’re paddling. You got to put yourself in the right place and then this burst of energy to match the speed of the wave so you can catch the wave and then you get this incredible moment or a few moments of effortless where the wave is projecting you and you’re riding that energy.
The thing is the wave isn’t the water moving. It’s something that’s below the surface of the water. It’s moving through the water and that’s a really hard notion to get across people when you’re teaching them to ride a wave. They want to surf in the white water where the wave is already broken because that’s the obvious place where the energy is present, but that’s not really where you surf. You really surf on the unbroken surface of the water, so you’re surfing on the wave energy itself.
You have probably heard of Laird Hamilton. You’re doing all your research here. He comes up in every book that has anything to do … He created this game where they ride a, it’s basically a dolphin wave that they put on this, it’s a metal fin that they put in the water and they ride in on the open ocean and they can ride it for 15, 20 miles between islands in Hawaii. It’s just the force of the wave moving through the water and they have figured out a way to harnest that with this wing, fin-shaped device that’s in the water and you’re standing up above it. That really demonstrates how the wave is a force that moves through the water. It’s not the water. It’s kind of an interesting…
Genevieve: It’s March in Maine and the water is still very cold so you need a level 5 thickness wetsuit if you’re going to go out there now?
David: That’s the beginning of our season is March. The water is the coldest February and March.
Genevieve: Summer is coming.
David: Yeah summer is coming quickly, yeah.
Genevieve: How can people get in touch with you and join the surf camp or sign their kids up for the surf camp?
David: We have a website which is pretty active, surfcampme.com and that’s the best way to reach us is to go there and shoot us an email through our contact page.
Genevieve: It’s a week camp so you can go for week segments.
David: We do a week camp for ages nine to fifteen. Then we do lessons for any age over eight. Adults usually want to come for a day or a couple of days and then that’s just a lesson so we do that as well.
Genevieve: That’s great. I would encourage anybody out there who is listening to contact David and go get wet this summer.
David: Genevieve, you are going to come this summer to increase that time on the wave from nano seconds to seconds?
Genevieve: Absolutely, it was a great experience. I wouldn’t miss it.
David: Yeah.
Genevieve: Thank you so much for being here.
David: It was my pleasure. Thanks for having me in.
Genevieve: To read more about David Turin and his passion for surfing and the sea, visit us at themainemag.com. To read more about David’s restaurant, pick up the current issue of the Maine Magazine, our special food edition at a local newsstand near you.
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Dr. Lisa: As part of our Give Back segment on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast for our “Oceans and Islands” theme show, we have invited Kelsey Hartley of Hartley Marine Services. She is the president and at age 28 and a female is in a very unique position. We thought not only does she do this, but there is the MS Harborfest that takes place in August every year and there is a tugboat muster that I happen to be privileged to be part of last year on her tugboat. This is the reason we have Kelsey in here today.
Kelsey: Thanks for having me.
Dr. Lisa: Genevieve Morgan is sitting next to me.
Genevieve: Hi Kelsey. It’s a pleasure.
Kelsey: Nice to meet you, too.
Dr. Lisa: Kelsey, you are, well as I said. You’re young. You’re female. We had a conversation before where you came on air about how relevant that is because not all that many women do what you do. You’re the president of a tugboat service operation.
Kelsey: Yeah, my situation is quite unique. I kind of fell into, but chose to become part of this. My dad started this company back in 1984 he passed away in 2007 and that was a crazy summer for us. I didn’t really know what I was doing at the time so I jumped back into the company to be closer to him to find a way to connect with him and realized that I loved it and I loved all the people that were involved with it and have gotten a lot of satisfaction in being part of it.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve been talking about the healing power of the ocean and the fact that this is one of the reasons we wanted to have this show. There’s a few different reasons. We heal the ocean by being good to it from an environmental standpoint, but it also heals us. Did you find that to be so in your case?
Kelsey: Yeah. I have traveled all over the place and in my years of going to college and coming back there’s something about the waterfront, especially in Maine that
I cannot stay away from. I feel much more balanced here. I feel much more myself here. I go to the ocean for comfort. I go to the ocean for ideas. I don’t know what it is exactly, but there is this push and pull to it. I just feel better around it.
Dr. Lisa: And your dad passed away suddenly?
Kelsey: Yeah. He was a pilot. He had a Cherokee six and he was going to New York …
I think he was looking for an engine or a couple engines for one of our boats and they hit a micro burst, a huge storm and didn’t make it.
Dr. Lisa: He was how old?
Kelsey: He was 53 at the time.
Dr. Lisa: You have a couple of younger sisters, I think?
Kelsey: Yes. I have two younger sisters. One is in college and the other one is just recently moved back to Maine so we’re all back in Maine together.
Dr. Lisa: This must have really been challenging for your mother, who I think is a teacher?
Kelsey: She’s a teacher. She’s an elementary school teacher. It was super challenging for everybody. Our family has a really strong work ethic and so one of the ways we dealt with it was to go right to work. It’s been interesting because just recently I think we have started to open up about how it affected us, which is four years later. It’s a way that we’re reconnecting as a family, too, is looking at our experiences around the accident and how we’ve changed, how it’s changed us, how it changed our path in life and how it’s brought us back together in a way.
Dr. Lisa: Do you think that the people that work on the waterfront in addition to the ocean being healing, do you think that the people that work with you and up and down the coast of Maine have an impact on your healing?
Kelsey: Yeah, definitely. That’s one of the reasons that I think I’m really involved with the company is that there is a huge network of amazing people that are attached to it. I have gone to them for strength just as much as I have gone to the ocean
I think and I think that the reason that they work in this industry … I don’t know what their reason they work in this industry is, but I think there is something that’s all connected between working on the waterfront, the types of characters that you see do that. That’s where I find all my strength.
Dr. Lisa: Now tell us about tugboats.
Kelsey: Tugboats are awesome. When I started to going to tugmusters back in 2000 …
Genevieve: Kelsey, can you explain exactly what a tugmuster is because I’ve never been to one?
Kelsey: You’ll have to go. They are lots of fun.
Dr. Lisa: I didn’t know what they were until I went last year. They are a lot of fun.
Kelsey: They are a good time. Tugmuster is part of the MS Society Harborfest, which will happen at the end of August. I think it’s the third weekend. It’s in a few parts. There is a sailboat regatta, a poker run and tugmuster. Tugmuster is for the tugboats. It’s a day where they get together and play, which they’re usually hard-working.
Genevieve: Shoot the fire hoses at each other.
Kelsey: Essentially yeah all of it. They do different demos. The capabilities of the tugs and then they have things like tugboat races, pushing contests. There’s a parade and then there’s just lots of barbecuing and reminiscing of old tugboat stories. It’s a good way to bring the maritime community together for a day and play with all your competition and for a good cause so we have a lot of fun.
Dr. Lisa: It was impressive to watch the tugboats push up against each other.
Kelsey: They are amazing machines.
Dr. Lisa: Those are mammoth boats that are out there on the water.
Kelsey: That’s thousands and thousands of horsepower. Actually, you’ll see Portland Harbor will just get churned up the mud from the bottom is all over the harbor. It’s great. It’s amazing to see that type of machinery play like that.
Dr. Lisa: That is nice to have that play element because aren’t the tugboats the workhorses of the world?
Kelsey: Yes. They get everything done. They are huge to industry. They move a lot of product up and down the coast.
Dr. Lisa: I know that one of the things that has been important is to continue on the family tradition as far as just the company, but is this also the case of the
MS Harborfest? Did you keep doing this because this was something that was started before your dad passed on?
Kelsey: Yeah, my dad started it and for me it’s become a celebration every year. First of all, it’s a great cause and I love all the dynamics that’s going on. It’s bringing the maritime community together. It’s fundraising for a horrible disease which everyone would love to see a cure for. One part of it for me is to celebrate. We’ve gotten through another year, through bad economy and ups and downs. It’s like a statement of, “We’re here. We’re going to stay here and we’re going to get better and better every year.”
Genevieve: How can people come to the Harborfest?
Kelsey: It’s set up right in the harbor. The lobster boat race is in tugmuster and even the sub boat regatta is going to be right in Portland Harbor. For the tugboat muster the best place to see it is on the Eastern Promenade. If you go set up there’s going to be tents and I think they’re going to have food. I know there’s going to be a 5k race this year so essentially, draw everyone up the hill and you can watch from there and then right downtown in the harbor, too, you’ll be able to sneak out onto the piers and check things out.
Dr. Lisa: It’s the people who actually get to be on the tugboats are pretty special. I had to wear a T-shirt.
Kelsey: My dad started a tradition with T-shirts. He always loved T-shirts. For our crew we tend to make up brightly colored shirts to unify everyone so for the day everybody is part of Hartley Marine and part of the event. We’ve had turquoise and orange and green and we had pink one year. Pink was the year that
I decided to celebrate, “This is a woman-owned company.” That was my statement and I don’t think some of our guys appreciated it very much. They were good sports though so I said, “No more pink.” We’ll do maybe a salmon color sometime.
Dr. Lisa: I think this is a great thing that you continue to do in honor of your dad and also continue to work all the things that you need to do to run the company.
Kelsey: Yeah. I learn every day. It’s an amazing experience. It’s such a rush every day.
Yeah, I have a lot of great people helping me out.
Dr. Lisa: We know that it’s also the MS Harborfest people also appreciate what you do and you are an inspiration to me. When I heard your story last year, I had been on the tugboat, I didn’t know that much about you and I heard your story and
I thought, “Oh my gosh, this is a woman that people need to know more about,” which is why we invited you to be on the show so thank you.
Kelsey: Thanks. Thank you very much.
Announcer: Our bodies are often the first indicators that something isn’t quite working.
Are you having difficulty sleeping, anxiety or chronic pain issues? Maybe you’ve had a job loss, divorce or recent empty nest? Dr. Lisa specializes in helping people through times of change and inspiring individuals to create joyful, sustainable lives. Visit doctorlisa.org for more information on her Yarmouth, Maine, medical practice and schedule your office visit or phone consult today.
Dr. Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. You have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, Show Number 25 “Oceans and Islands,” airing for the first time Sunday, March 4, 2012. Our show included Peter Ralston of the Ralston Gallery and formerly of the Island Institute, David Turin of David’s Restaurant and owner of a local surf camp and Kelsey Hartley of Harley Marine Services representing also the MS Harborfest.
As we discussed living in Maine, we have the unique opportunity to be healed by a vast resource which is the ocean. The ocean heals us in many ways. Not only does it have a saline content which is similar to our own blood plasma, but it provides an endless vista by which we may sit and observe things like sunrises. In addition, we find ourselves drawn to the people who walk along and work along the ocean waterfront. As Kelsey Hartley described there is an entire population of people that we may not even realize exist working out there on the watchers off the coast of Maine. Anyone who lives in Maine or has ever visited the state realizes how healing this big ocean is and as one who has lived in Maine almost all of her life I can certainly attest to this fact.
We, at the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, hope that you are inspired to visit the ocean on a regular basis and also to listen to more of our shows. We hope that you are downloading our show on iTunes so that you may have it delivered to your inbox weekly. We hope that you’ll give us feedback through our D-O-C-T-O-R-Lisa.org website and that you will subscribe to our e-newsletter through that same website. We would really like to know what you think. We would like to know how you are inspired and how you are healed. We’d like to know what future topics we may present for you. Thank you so much for listening to the
Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. Thank you for being part of our world. May you have a bountiful life.
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The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is recording in downtown Portland at the offices of Maine Magazine on 75 Market Street. It is produced by Kevin Thomas and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Editorial content produced by Chris Cast and Genevieve Morgan. Audio production and original music by John C. McCain. Our assistant producer is Jane Pate. For more information on our hosts, production team, Maine Magazine or any of the guests speech or here today, visit us at doctorlisa.org. Tune in every Sunday at 11 am for the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour on WLOB Portland, Maine, 1310 AM or streaming WLOBRadio.com. Podcasts are available at Dr. Lisa.org.