Oceanside

            Last Monday I had a half hour to spare after I dropped my husband off at work and before I had to start my workday at the library. The air was calm and the light was breaking so I decided to go for a walk on the beach. There’s a long list of reasons why I love living here, but one of them is that there might be four feet of snow at our house, but a twenty-five minute drive into town can deliver me to a snowless, sandy beach.

            I don’t go to the beach as often as I should. When I’m in town I’m usually focused on my job or running errands, but when I do take the time to go I never regret it. Living near the ocean is a gift, and every time I spend time walking its shores I see something or find something or feel something that gives me spark. Some of the offerings are physical objects: rocks, driftwood, fossils, beach glass, or some trinket that’s rolled ashore from someplace far away.

            Some of the sea’s offerings are physical but not in the form of objects. Growing up in the Rocky Mountain West, it wasn’t until I moved to a coastal community that I experienced the salty sea air and the way the ocean, even a cold, northern ocean, stores heat and exudes it ever so slightly. When I’m near it, I feel the moisture on my face. It’s nourishing and enlivening, and it holds an essence that cosmetic companies have been trying to replicate and bottle but can’t in reality even come close to.

            Other gifts go deeper, beyond the physical realm. On a calm day, the sound of the lapping waves can lull me into a tranquil state. On a stormy day, the rolling water reminds me of my smallness, my vulnerability, my dependence on dry land and shelter. The ocean, whether calm or rough, offers perspective.  

            When I walked the beach on Monday morning before work, it felt something like waking up after a deep sleep. In this part of Alaska we’re emerging from winter’s darkness now, gaining several minutes of daylight each day and I’m sure that was a part of it. But the feeling of emergence I felt and carried with me throughout the day is one I’m trying to hold on to, and study, and remember.

            When I left the beach on Monday morning my jacket pockets were full of rocks, my lungs and my skin felt nourished by the salty sea air, but my soul had been given a gift as well. I left feeling like I’d connected to something magnificent, and that magnificence reminded me that we have it within us to emerge from whatever it is that keeps us stifled, unfeeling, and afraid. We have the right to feel hopeful about the future of our planet. We are capable of creating a better existence for ourselves and for each other.

             It was a lot to take away from a walk on the beach.

            For reasons I don’t entirely understand we’ve made truth a difficult thing to grab ahold of lately. We can pick and choose our news to fit just about any belief we want to hold. But even though it seems slippery at times, truth is a gift that nature can give us. We just have to look for it in places we’ve become unaccustomed to looking. We have to listen in ways we’ve forgotten how to listen. And we have to expand our imaginations through a lens of renewal rather than exhaustion.

            Thirty minutes at Bishop’s Beach on a Monday morning reminded me of all of that. When the chatter of media and a busy life are sure to distract me, I’ll try to remember the gifts I found there, the truths the ocean revealed. The rocks in my coat pocket can act as a physical reminder, like a rosary to bring me back into focus. A slow, deep breath can bring me back to the stillness of that morning’s slack tide. I’ll try to take inward the jolt of gratitude and expansiveness I felt beside the water’s edge. As within so without, as above so below. 

            I’ll write it down to remember the experience, to cement it into my existence. And I share a fragment of it here, hoping it will inspire you to step into a place or a state of being that reminds you of life’s gifts and of what love feels like, and that there is more for us, always more, for as long as we’re here.