Essays by Ross A. Laird

Geek Life

I prepare the altar in the quiet of early morning, before my day becomes cluttered with tasks and appointments and obligations. I lay aside my cup of ginger tea, adjust my posture on the polished walnut seat, and clear away the accumulated detritus of yesterday. With the heel of my hand I sweep dust from the base of the lamp. I reposition an errant cord and wipe a smudge from the screen. I reach forward, in the attitude of supplication and expectation shared by devotees the world over, and gently grasp the hand of the oracle.
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Event Magazine Creative Non-fiction Contest Adjudication Essay

As Northrop Frye recognized long ago, the essential Canadian conundrum is not of identity but of place. We have been inculcated into a particular national question —who are we? — but our prevailing concern is actually more subtle and profound. We inhabit a landscape of unparalleled diversities and a cultural milieu of unrivaled alchemy; we synthesize nationalities and geographies; we order our tandoori with a side of sashimi, and wash it down with okanagan wine. Frye discerned the essential query hidden in the turbulent beauty of this land and its people: Where is here? ...>

Rogue Waves:
Indomitable Wanderers of the Sea

In February 1933, on its way from San Diego to Manila, the US Navy ship Ramapo was caught in the teeth of a relentless storm. The wind had slowly gathered momentum across thousands of nautical miles of the open Pacific, piling up monstrous swells: twenty feet, then thirty, then higher. On the seventh day of the storm, with the east wind howling at sixty knots, the swells grew to an average of fifty feet. Every fifteen seconds a new behemoth — large as a five-story office building — shouldered its way into the stern. ...>

Essential Tools for Today's Mariner

In the greatest sea epic of Western literature, the mariner Odysseus is held captive for seven years on an island by the enchantress Calypso. Eventually, in a debate among the gods, it is decided (grudgingly, for Odysseus has offended Poseidon) that the hero should be freed to return home. Zeus dispatches Hermes, the Wayfinder, to impart the verdict to Calypso, and after a fit of pique, she relents. ...>

A Craftsman's Guide to
Ethical Wood Use

We tend to think of the tension between pristine nature and human ambition as a contemporary struggle, but the urge to own and exploit forests is a fundamental human impulse. At every point in history, wherever humans have possessed sufficient technology or population to deplete natural abundance, we have done so. ...>

The Casco:
Home From the Sea

The ship was quiet, the sails slack.The men in the hold waited. Dread spread among them. They did not speak the language of the crew,though they understood perfectly the gestures of the guns ...>

The Jasper Queen:
A Meditation on September 11
(Also appears in A Stone's Throw)

The indomitable spirit cannot be diminished -- by negligence, by war, by time. This occurs to me on September 9th, 2001, in New York ...>

First on Four Legs...
Creativity and the Nature of Psychology

The oldest artifacts of human endeavor — cave paintings at Lascauxand Altamira, tools in the Blombos caves, Venus figurines sofantastically old we hardly recognize ourselves — are works ofart. Creativity is the imprint of humanity ...>

The World Tree
Conservation and Conflict in Burns Bog
(Originally appeared in Canadian Geographic)

South of the riverbend, twenty minutes along a trail fringed withpink gangly stalks of sweet gale, a black spruce that I callthe World Tree stands against a spring sky. ...>

Waves of Grain
Choosing Wood for Marine Applications

In an age of plastics and composites, wood has not surrendered itsclaim on the mariner ...>

Making it to the Finish
A Brief Guide to Wood Finishing and Refinishing

Woodworkers and boat builders are, on the whole, a contentious bunch ...>

Epoxy
The One Product Toolkit

Among the materials available to themodern mariner, none is more versatile than epoxy. For gluing,repairing, finishing, epoxy provides a unique solution. It's the ducttape of the sea ...>