Adrift.

Adrift: Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea
by Steve Callahan

It is a dramatic true story told by the man who lived it.
Here are a few lines and excerpts from the book:

"There is a magnificent intensity in life that comes when we are not in control but are only reacting, living, surviving".

"To go to sea is to get a glimpse of the face of God. It is a wonderful feeling to be so humbled".

"Yet life must be nourished with meaning just as with food."

(He kept a log in his raft and this is an entry around week 2 about the fish he sees regularly and his possible fate) "The Dorado's remain, beautiful, alluring. I ask one to marry me. But her parents will not hear of it. I am not colorful enough. Imagine, bigotry even here! However, they also point out that I do not have a very bright future. It is a reasonable objection."

"We want to think that we are more than that, that we control our lives with our intellect. But now, without civilization clouding the issue, I wonder to what extent intellect is controlled by instinct and culture is the result of raw gut reactions to life."

"It is a view of heaven from a seat in hell." (Observing the rising and setting sun from his raft)

"I am not dying and I am not finding salvation. I am in limbo."

"The heavens have provided me with an unbreakable, immortal, fully guaranteed compass." (Speaking of the stars)

(Around day 30) "In these moments of peace, deprivation seems a strange sort of gift. I find food in a couple of hours fishing each day, and I seek shelter in a rubber tent. How unnecessarily complicated my past life seems. For the first time, I clearly see a vast difference between human needs and human wants. Before this voyage, I always had what I needed - food, shelter, clothing, and companionship - yet I was often dissatisfied when I didn't get everything I wanted, when people didn't meet my expectations, when a goal was thwarted, or when I couldn't acquire some material goody. My plight has given me a strange kind of wealth, the most important kind. I value each moment that is not spent in pain, desperation, hunger, thirst, or loneliness. Even here, there in richness all around me. As I look out of the raft, I see God's face in the smooth waves, His grace in the dorado's swim, feel his breath against my cheek as it sweeps down from the sky. I see that all of creation is made in His image. . ."

"I am awed by the intricate perfection of the world in which I find myself."