A man, his dog, and a duct-taped boat were plucked from the Gastineau Channel near Juneau, Alaska, on Wednesday June 7, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. The unidentified man, who was not wearing a life jacket, was headed toward Bishop Point, about 10 miles down the channel from where he was picked up. The leaky boat and its passengers were “transferred” to Juneau’s Douglas Harbor, the Coast Guard said.

The Coast Guard did not say anything about why he chose this method of transportation, or the origin of it, but they did provide a picture, in case you’ve never seen a man and a dog in a duct-taped boat.

A man, a dog, and an inadequate vessel.
A man, a dog, and an inadequate vessel. U.S. Coast Guard

Let’s have a look at him. He is a regular man in shades, sitting cross-legged on a manifestly unsafe vessel, steadily paddling toward a (possibly impossible) goal through what is surely very, very cold water. He’s Sisyphus, which is to say he is all of us, which is to say that maybe one day you, too, will be lucky enough to be plucked from a ceaseless grind and deposited back on safer shores, your life reoriented, your reality altered, and your perspective wide enough to see the wisdom of a life jacket and a bigger boat.