"Articulate Hands"

Yesterday marked the commencement of spring lobstering for Cap and I. We pulled out this year's tags and the rusty hogrings and began to work on gear. Cap's 21" wide lobster traps are a dream to handle after those awkward shrimp traps. It's like breathing fresh sea air after suffocating in urban smog to just poke your fingers through that nice wide lobster trap mesh and lift it any ol' way after struggling to lift shrimp traps all season with their small impenetrable mesh.

Working on gear is mindless, monotonous work (like most of the tasks that go into fishing) and is conducive to good discussion. Cap and I got a lot of talking done yesterday. We made small talk, we made tall talk. Cap made a proposal. He informed me that he intends to replace 200 traps this season. He did some research and found that building traps from a kit is much more economical than buying the finished product. One can save about $10/trap by building them as opposed to buying prefabricated lobster traps.

Cap tried to sell this idea to me by attempting to market the skill of building traps as a useful one. Honestly, I found this difficult to swallow, but Cap said something else that resonated within me. He referred to a phrase that he had heard mentioned before:

"Building traps is slow going at first, but after about 10 traps, you begin to have articulate hands and the process speeds up. Not many people have articulate hands these days."

In "Go with the Flow," I wrote of the practice required to bait traps gracefully and efficiently. Well, in my mind, this is directly related to having articulate hands. As is learning to play the violin. It took years upon years before I could place my fingers on the fingerboard without thinking about it or looking at the instrument and successfully express the notes in my head or on the sheet music. When I play the fiddle I am literally articulating notes with my hands. The meaning of this phrase isn't quite so literal when used to describe physical labor. In this case, one is articulating physical structures with one's hand motions. None the less, one is learning to effectively and eloquently express something, whether it be a sound or a lobster trap, with one's hands, just as intellectuals vie to articulate ideas with words.

My hands are constantly learning new ways to articulate. Right now they are articulating thoughts on my keyboard. Every day I learn a new way of articulating a meal, a tune, a bait iron, or a trap. My hands aspire to be capable, creative and self-sufficient. And I do well by them.