Fisherman’S Call: To Awaken the Heart of Compassion

By William Packer

What would it look like if you gave up your stuff your fears, conditioning and attachment to human-centered drama, and lived purely from your heart? Bill Packer, author of Fishermans Call, sold everything and went into the wilderness determined to open his heart and connect with the Creator though the natural world.

Discover Natures Secret and the amazing story of a life lived from the heart connection, with compassion for all living things, and the miracles he has experienced as a result. You will never see nature the same way again. This compilation describes Packers personal story of awakening human compassion, but it is also a call to us all to open our hearts to the precious wonder of life all around us and awaken from the slumber of human ignorance. Inspiring, insightful and prophetic, Fishermans Call challenges us to look deeply and question what is most meaningful in life.

Author William Billy Packer shares a series of personal stories, first about the sea, then about stewardship of the earth, drawn from his own experiences. Faced with instances of destruction of the environment, notably of the ancient redwood forests in northern California, Packer began questioning his own cultural conditioningall the things we learn and tend to accept as true from our families and the cultural environment we are exposed to as we grow and mature.

Fishermans Call contains a timely and vital message: the destructive human impact to life on our planet can no longer be ignored. Our very survival may depend on our attention to this fact. No longer can we ignore the fact that the human intellect, devoid of the hearts compassionate wisdom, is destructive and self-serving.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9781450264648

William Packer

William “Billy” Packer was born and raised in Newburyport, Massachusetts where he raised his four children with his ex-wife, Joan Styles Packer. He has been married to his current wife, Phyllis, for the past 18 years. Bill has worked as a design draftsman, part owner in a marina and fish market in his home town and legendary charter and fishing boat captain until 1977. Following the sale of his fishing boat he left the sea and began a thirty-year journey of awakening and discovery. Over the years Bill has published multiple small booklets which have been distributed throughout the United Sates and several other countries.

Book preview

Fisherman’s Call

To Awaken the Heart of Compassion

A True Story

William Billy Packer

Cover photo of author by Fran Dalton

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Fisherman’s Call

To Awaken the Heart of Compassion

Copyright © 2011 by William Billy Packer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Unless otherwise indicated, Bible quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Edited By: Cynthia Rozzi Snelling

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-6465-5 (sc)

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-6464-8 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 09/02/2011

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction to Dad’s Book 

PART ONE

REFLECTIONS

Chapter One

Winter Storm

Chapter Two

Newburyport Native

PART TWO

FISHERMAN CALLING

Chapter Three

The Fisherman

Chapter Four

My Last Discovery While

on the Martha Ingraham

Chapter Five

Sheila – It’s been a Long Time

PART THREE

A BOOK FINDS ME

Chapter Six

Wilderness Mountain Paradise

Chapter Seven

Black Elk’s Great Vision

Chapter Eight

Losing Martha

Chapter Nine

Tapping Into Miraculous Power

Chapter Ten

My Way Back To Sheila

Chapter Eleven

Nature’s Government

Chapter Twelve

The Monkey Story

Chapter Thirteen

The Guru

Chapter Fourteen

Timely Breakthrough

Chapter Fifteen

Three Prophetic Dreams

PART FOUR

PUTTING BLACK ELK’S LAW TO WORK

Chapter Sixteen

Innocent Fear of the Messiah

Chapter Seventeen

Suicidal Depression

PART FIVE

AWAKENING THE COMPASSIONATE HEART

Chapter Eighteen

God’s Prayer and God’s Call

Chapter Nineteen

A Miraculous Melody: A Journey Toward the Power of Compassion

Chapter Twenty

The Florida Everglades

Chapter Twenty-One

Everglades Power

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Power of God’s Prayer

Chapter Twenty-Three

A Paper Trail

Chapter Twenty-Four

Awakening Miraculous Compassion

Chapter Twenty-Five

Black Elk, Jesus, and the Bible

Chapter Twenty-Six

Putting It All Together – What I learned From God

EPILOGUE

Summing It All Up

The Great Understanding from Black Elk : The Door to the Power of the World.

To my precious sister Sheila

And to the whole living earth; to all of its peoples, creatures, forests and all of its systems of life.

This book is also dedicated to the transformation of men, women, society, nations and civilization.

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Sheila and William, Around Ages 6 and 7

Acknowledgments

Many people helped with this book. Peter Gallant was the first. Very early on he gave me sound advice: "You can’t preach. You can’t tell people. They won’t listen. You’ll lose the reader . . . Stick to the story line," he advised.

Another dear friend, Edward Gandolfo, also gave me sound advice in the form of a question: Where is the monkey story, he asked.

My son, Jeff, would later tell me: Dad, I read the monkey story to my church group and many people were in tears.

Robert Amon, AKA Ramon, is my environmental activist friend who was my partner in forming the Ancient Forest Bus Brigade. He is also a great editor. We spent two weeks together as he edited my book. I could easily see the book getting better and better with everything that he took out, which was a lot. I was thrilled and deeply grateful as he read on and on. Good stuff, he often said. I kept repeating: Ramon, you’re giving wings to my book!

My son, Jeffrey, also helped with this book. He pointed out and corrected a serious mistake in Chapter 25. Indeed, he kept this book afloat.

Cynthia Rozzi Snelling was the final person to help with my manuscript. She edited everything, rearranged Chapters, asked a lot of questions, gave great advice and did a truly wonderful, first class editorial job. She came with an extended background in editing, writing and proofreading and she brought that experience into every page. I feel so grateful to her. Thank you Cynthia.

So very many people helped with this book throughout the years. Plus many wonderful creatures helped, too. Sincere and heartfelt thanks to the countless wild creatures and thoughtful people who have helped with my journey and this book for more than thirty years. I feel so deeply grateful to all of you.

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My Son Jeffrey and his daughter, Jasmine

Introduction to Dad’s Book

By Jeff Packer

I had always known my Dad as a fisherman. Even when he was a draftsman and engineer he arranged his professional life so that there would always be time for fishing trips, even if he had to pull me out of school for a special adventure out at sea. My Dad, the fisherman. That’s how it always was and as a teenager I knew that was how it always would be. But life has a way of pulling the rug out from under you and that’s what happened when the government proposed new fishing regulations on the small fishermen which would take away their livelihood and for some, their love for the sea. That momentous act changed my Dad’s life, as well as our relationship, forever. He had loved that life; just as I did, having spent each summer of my youth living on his boat and traveling the coast of New England in search of ever richer fishing grounds. My father eventually decided to sell his boat and leave behind all that he had embraced as a fisherman. The boat sold quickly. I was stunned. The fishing was over and my father began a journey of discovery that few of us understood at the time.

After selling his last boat, the Martha Ingraham, he visited the vast wilderness of the Oregon Mountains. While there he discovered something that began a journey that continues to this day. He desperately wanted me to see this forest before it was gone to lumber. Pulling me out of high school we flew to Texas where Dad left his van. We drove towards Oregon and a new phase of our father/son relationship began.

Driving north along the California coast we experienced being flooded with feelings of appreciation and gratitude for the beauty of nature. We were awestruck walking through the ancient redwood forests in northern California. My Dad’s heart broke as we witnessed truck after truck hauling redwood carcasses down the highway. He wept and then raged at humanity’s lack of concern and reverence for earthly life. On that long ago trip I was beginning to see that a permanent shift had occurred for Dad. There was no going back to our old ways. I now understand that what was happening to my father was an opening of his heart.

My father had begun questioning his own cultural conditioning - all the things we learn and tend to accept as true from our families and the cultural environment we are exposed to as we grow and mature. Many of us never question the basic assumptions and values we are conditioned to believe. It can be quite unsettling. For Dad, he began to see that much of his conditioned belief system simply no longer held any truth for him.

Dad recalled visiting a longtime fisherman friend who was dying of cancer. He described profound changes in his friend’s attitude and perspectives. This man always had a rather harsh and arrogant quality to him. Then a kind of personality shift occurred. When faced with death this man became a kinder and more loving person than he had ever been. On his death bed, he shared with my father some of the things he would do differently if he could live his life over. He came to realize that he had been ignorant of what was truly most important in life. But why do people wait until their last moments on this Earth to become enlightened?

At this time I was young, out of high school, and on an adventure – not really sure what to make of it all. Who was this man? No longer a draftsman, no longer an engineer nor a fisherman. Who was he? A religious fanatic? A devout follower of a Lakota Indian? As the answers became clearer over the years I found a new fisherman in my father; a fisherman seeking compassion for all life. Spreading the word of his revelations obtained on his personal journey, seeking the ultimate compassion for all living things, would become his life’s daunting mission for over 30 years.

My father’s new life continues. It has not been an easy road for him, especially in those early years. Relationships changed. Friends fell away and new friends were gained. There is much I admire about my father and I treasure our friendship. To me he’s a living example of the willingness to follow one’s truth no matter what the outcome. He inspires me to live an authentic life and to have faith that humanity can change and grow to its fullest potential. In this day and age, there is a growing movement of awakening. For some it is becoming a conscious path. For others, it remains an unconscious yearning for connection and meaning in a world which, sadly, often lacks a compassionate heart.

This book retells his journey to the sacred. A journey that has touched many hearts, opened many minds and enlightened many souls; mine included. I truly believe that reading this book will give you the tools to take you on your own personal journey in awakening your compassionate heart long before your last moments on this good Earth.

PART ONE

REFLECTIONS

Chapter One

Winter Storm

Shivering, shaking, vomiting and freezing, I stood on the pitching deck. My eyes were stinging from wind-driven snow and spray as my ice-encrusted boat took wave after wave. They broke broadside over the bow, the wheelhouse and the gunnels. I watched in shocked disbelief, squinting, dripping, trembling and horrified as I desperately tried to do what needed to be done. In the pitch black terror of the night, could things have been any worse?

From harbor to harbor I searched, looking for the right boat. Nova Scotia was a good place to look for reasonably priced fishing boats in the thirty to forty foot range. Novies are extremely seaworthy and attractive, sitting like seabirds on the water and gracefully riding the waves like seagulls. With their proud high bows and bright paints, Novies are more like puffins with their elegant wide beaks, colorful and pleasing to behold, designer-painted by the master of natural wonder.

The boat was for my son, Jeff. Interested in going tuna fishing, he asked for my help in finding a good, solid boat. Jeff was working a steady job and didn’t have time to travel to the coast of Nova Scotia with me. He trusted my judgment and promised to join me when he could.

When I found the bolted boat, I knew it was perfect; thirty-eight feet long, sixteen feet wide, trunk cabin with headroom, and wheelhouse with sliding window, six cylinder Chevy gasoline engine – the Nova Scotia diesel as they are sometimes called. It was a lobster fisherman’s boat with a bolted stern that was strong and unusual. Unusual because the bolted boat, as I called it, was bolted together in lots of other important places, too, so I knew it was well built. A builder put it together from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and a local fisherman later told me that boats built by this man lasted longer than other Novies. Perhaps the bolted boat saved my life. I’ll never know for sure.

For weeks I waited in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia for the perfect winter weather before I headed across to the States in my Novie. It was about a hundred and twenty miles from Yarmouth to Bar Harbor, Maine. It was open ocean and in the middle of winter the weather conditions could be really bad. So, I wasn’t in any rush to get going. I wanted to wait for the best weather possible.

While I waited in Yarmouth, my son came across on the ferry to see the boat. He had three days off from work. He drove to Portland and bought a ticket to Yarmouth. It was great to see Jeff, even for just a short visit. Jeff hated to leave me to take the boat back alone, but I knew I’d be fine by myself. Jeff had memories of a storm that had come up quickly on a seemingly quiet and calm fishing trip. Things changed quickly and we almost lost everything, including our lives. That’s how it is on the ocean. She is the master and very unpredictable.

When it was time to leave, Jeff felt sick about going. He stood on the high upper deck of the huge ferryboat, looking down at me, standing alone in the cockpit of the tiny lobster boat. Jeff later told me that a terrible feeling of dread swept over him as he watched me. It wasn’t a premonition, he said, it was just a sick feeling that overtook and scared him. He didn’t want to leave me alone, God bless him. He knew I had a long ocean crossing in a small boat. He knew how bad things could get, especially in the dead of winter. Even under the best weather conditions things could suddenly turn ferocious. He’d been there before. He’d seen it. He remembered.

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One day, when Jeff was a young boy, a good friend talked me into running his charter boat as a favor. Come on, Billy, Wilbur said, I’m going to lose a lot of money if you don’t take this fishing party out for me. For hours these thirty paying guests were waiting at the dock, but Wilbur’s skipper never showed up. I didn’t want to take a big group of people out on a boat I wasn’t sure of. I always went to sea on strong seaworthy boats that I knew were just right. Most of my boats were new, or close to it, but Wilbur’s boats were usually old and fixed up. I didn’t really trust them but I finally agreed to do him the favor and take this group out fishing for the day.

Jeff was with me and we left about eleven o’clock, three hours later than this group expected to leave. By the time we got to Jeffrey’s Ledge, about twenty-six miles ESE of Newburyport, the fishing was good and everyone was catching a lot of haddock and drinking a lot of beer, just having a totally fun day. It was a flat, calm day. There wasn’t as much as the slightest ripple on the water. There wasn’t a breath of wind to stir the sea. It was one of those perfectly still days that I loved most of all. We stayed at Jeffrey’s Ledge for an extra two hours after all of the other boats left for home. We’d had a late start and I wanted to give the group a few extra hours of fishing. What a mistake!

The haddock were still coming aboard, one after another, when I received a call from one of the fishing boats that had left two hours earlier. Billy, you’d better get headed in. We’ve just run into a terrible northwest wind. We’re about ten miles off the beach and it’s blowing really hard. It’ll reach you soon. You’d better head in.

We pulled in the fishing lines, hauled the anchor and headed west for the beach, twenty-six miles away. Before we’d gone very far the northwest breeze started, rippling the sea into little six-inch waves that would soon grow into steep-sided monsters.

I knew we were in for it! Northwesters could be really bad, and the northwest wind picked up quickly and steadily. The boat began to buck, pitch and pound. I began to worry. We had a long way to go before we would reach the lee of the land. There would be no escaping the ferocious northwest wind-driven waves until we got close to the shore.

We were running the boat from the flying bridge, soaked by spray and waves coming over the bow. The seas grew quickly. Savage waves, the tops blowing off, slammed into us, one after another. Two large boxes of rods and reels were torn from the canopy roof behind us and thrown overboard. There was no turning back to retrieve them. They were gone.

I knew we were in trouble before it happened. The wind was just too strong, sixty to seventy miles an