Excavating the Wood-Pussy that was raised off the bottom of Tiburon harbor during the early 1960s and left to rot in a field in West Marin. My uncle, the landlubber, had grand plans to rebuild the little wooden boat and learn to sail, catch some wind, maybe a girl—he was a big dreamer. Only it was never restored. Our place was the final dumping ground of his scuppered schemes. The greenhouse was another scheme deferred. He did eventually learn to sail and race in Monterey Bay—and eventually, the girl. The small sailboat with an odd name and good lines was a very odd fixture at my grandmother’s eclectic make-do homestead. So many cousins and friends set sail on the wind and rode its gunnels in search of swashbuckling adventure skimming a high sea of deep grass. And the horses would come down to graze around it as if to keep us safe. Wish I had some photos of those days, but memory and mere words will have to suffice. During the early 1970s, I turned the derelict sailboat into a planter garden. But the gophers drilled through the hull to get to the bulbs. The only plants to survive their voracious appetites were the naked ladies. This area under the madrone tree is also my summer sleeping platform. However the hump in the middle finally got to me and so I began trying to level the soil—only to find a bit of red shag carpet poking out of the ground like Ariadne’s string, which led me to the long-forgotten Wood-Pussy. I had no idea the boat was buried there under a load of hardpan impacted by decades of cars driving on it. Why not leave it there, you might ask. The wood will rot. But clearly the red and green shag carpet squares that lined the inside of the hull never rotted. At the time we didn’t know the fiberglass and chrome-green marine paint were toxic—so I continue to persevere with my excavation process now that the colonies of naked ladies are done blooming and can be safely moved. You can actually see the small holes embedded in the flakes of fiberglass where marine worms drilled to get to the wood, leading to its demise. The boat was used as an impromptu trash pit during the late 1970s. Small chunks of National Geographics still readable after being buried 40 years, also toxic. A horseshoe, Virginia Slims cigarette holders, beer tabs, embedded glass, a wedge of smoked glass from a Pong table, random plastic, toys, a blue plastic horse, a tiny boxcar, with a bit of track, half of a mother-of-pearl penknife, pennies, beads, a marble, odd bits of brass spools, cleats, a flathead drillbit, and long iron shanks—means I need to check every dirt clod for debris. A curious lowest common denominator of broken glass, is the triangle. Unless it’s curved, then it’s a long triangular elipsoid. My primary digging tool is a piece of iron rod with a spoonlike spatula end, also found with the sailboat. You can see it at the end of the colander if you look closely. You can also see one floorboard of the Wood-Pussy poking out of the dirt in the upper left corner as well. I’m about halfway done with the memento mori of a project that I began in May. My very own Sutton Hoo Superfund dig. These boards are from the transom and front end of the hull of the boat. The rest of the boat is under that brown shag carpet, aka my sleeping platform. The days are drawing in, soon I will wrap up the dig, and my summer encampment—soon both will be delegated to the unconditional past to become a distant memory. Buried somewhere in all of this is a poem waiting to be excavated.
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