The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea. ~Isak Dinesen
No catalog of nature's wonders would be complete without mention of that element that covers roughly 71 per cent of the earth's surface-the ocean. According to the National Oceanic and Atmosphetic Administration (NOAA), that percentage contains 97 per cent of the planet's entire water supply and is home to nearly half of all the species of living things on earth. And like all of earth's other wonders, it doesn't come to us. We go to it to enjoy what is has to offer from the recreational to the aesthetic, from the adventurous to the poetic.
It's been my own observation that the sea, like all else in nature, is never static. It is always moving, changing, altering itself as it shapes, not only the shoreline's characteristics but all that exists along its ever-shifting boundaries. Years of its washing over rocks wears them gradually away, resculpts them, alters their hues and their textures much as rainfall erodes hillsides and imbues them with new complexions as time goes by. Nature, the great reconstructive surgeon, is ever at work reshaping the marine landscape so that it, like so much else around us, never looks the same two days in a row. Blink, and what you just saw you will never see again. Such is the great mass of moving water that lures us to it for reasons as varied as we are.
While the wooded places display their energy more subtly and in much slower fashion, the sea exhibits hers openly and unabashedly. Calm one day, in an uproar the next, it defies our hold over it and never fails to remind us of its power and ability to reduce our lives to debris in a very short time. As yet another aspect of nature's insistent presence among us, we have no choice but to stand in awe of it, respect its awesome power, and allow it full access into areas where it has proven fruitless to try to stop it.
On a smaller scale, the sea provides us with so much pleasure. From wading in its frigid waters to scavenging for the myriad forms of life which it deposits along the shoreline, it never disappoints. For what bored child cannot have his or her focus shifted and held by simply walking along the sand gathering stones, bits of wood or glass polished smooth by the sea's movement or wading in tidal pools in search of those small creatures who scuttle under rocks at our approach?
We flock to the shore to relax and are drawn to its majesty during storms. We gaze out at the full moon's reflection across the rippling waves and marvel at the feats of surfers who enter into a particularly intimate dance with them. We take boats out and cast fishing lines into the depths, and we here along the Maine coast think of the sea as a natural part of our lives. For those of us who live in some degree of proximity to it, it has always been there and will always be there. Its tides will continue to answer to the moon's pull, and its waves will still form to an intensity dictated by wind and weather.
Many years ago, I went with my family often to Fortunes Rocks, and it is still my favorite spot in York County along the Atlantic coastline. Facing the open ocean, the bracing cold waters are still my favorite way to cool off, and I try to get down there as often as I can. Back then, I'd always wander off to my favorite perch on the rock outcropping that juts out into the tide. I'd get out there as far as I could go and sit for hours, or at least until my father would start shouting and waving to me to return before the tide came back in and made that impossible. There was nothing about the experience that I didn't love...the smell of the seaweed baking in the sun, the water lapping at the lowest rocks, and the seagulls bobbing on the waves in the distance. And of course, the walk to and from the outcropping was always a joy as well, the air crisp and clean and invigorating even on the hottest days, for only during the rarest heat waves is true relief not to be found close to the water on that beach.
The sea is where it all began, and I like to think that all else around us, wood, field and flower, are extensions of its magnanimity. Of course, that's just me waxing sentimental again about the big wondrous world around us that we simply call nature. That tree across the street really is a part of the process, for at some point this summer, moisture will exit its leaves into the atmosphere and fall as rain on the land where it will drain into a river and eventually make its way to the sea in one great cycle that never ceases to amaze.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
Showing posts with label energy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label energy. Show all posts
Friday, June 6, 2014
Childhood Wonder
We all have our share of worry and care, but nature is there to console us. From a fluttering wing to the greening of spring, she never neglects to restore us. ~Anonymous
It's just after 10 a.m., and the sun in its altering path is, at the moment, flooding the trees across the dirt road with light that glints upon each leaf. Through them the dark trunks rise and stretch their many arms, providing a sort of basting that binds this whole incredible tapestry of vegetation. Layer upon layer of rich color move the eye away from the most prominent surfaces toward infinity, that place deep in the woods where sunlight is a rare visitor and the wind has little effect.
I am reminded of the hemlock grove not far from here that I discovered one day on a walk when I noticed that the path to my neighbor's pond veered off into a much shadier area. Not being sure at the time of just what land belonged to which neighbor, I passed it by at first. Then one day, I veered off my usual course and suddenly found myself in a deep dark wood that allowed precious little sunlight in, and that only in the sparest beams that managed to force their way through tiny breaks in the canopy. It was so quiet in there, for not only are trees useful as windbreaks and air purifiers, but they muffle sound as well. It was like stepping briefly into another world, into a dark tranquil place where even my footsteps were muffled by the thick carpet composed of many years-worth of fallen hemlock needles. Despite the fact that others have surely been there, I still insist on thinking that it's my discovery and that no one knows about it, or at least no one looks upon it in quite the same way that I do.
It is such a short leap in this busy world from the wonders of childhood to the sensory wasteland that is often the adult experience, from feeling a genuinely innocent awe at a new-found flower to not even knowing or caring that it's there. What happens to dull this wondrous ability, or is it just that it seems silly when an adult feels that ancient thrill at coming upon something new and beautiful? It's hard not to when you live surrounded by trees and when the day's first sign of life isn't generated by another human but by a bird at the feeder or a chipmunk scurrying into its den. It's refreshing to see that wild energy devoted entirely to mindful pursuits and to the very task of living. Nothing in nature is wasted, for every move each animal makes is geared toward its survival, just as is every process going on unseen in those trees across the way. They're all still green for now, with just an odd reddish or prematurely yellowed leaf poking through here, the first to succumb to the shortening days and lessening light.
Early each day around 6 a.m., as sounds of traffic begin to reach me from the distant main road, a new sound greets me, that of a rooster crowing somewhere. And if I close my eyes, it's the 1950's again, and I am back on my grandfather's small farm watching my mother pull eggs out from under the brooding hens. Certain sounds have the ability to do that, to take you back to another time that awakens, if only briefly, old sensations that prove that you are not so different after all from the child you once were.
I don't venture out often enough, but I will as autumn moves in to cool and dry the air and discourage the insects that rule this place in summer. Everything is reaching its peak, from the tall tomato plants sporting their reddening orbs to the phlox that wave in the breeze. The hydrangea blossoms have greened, and the wild grape vine beyond the back slope has reached the road. It rarely bears fruit now, as it hasn't been pruned in ages, and its runners now cover the low vegetation below the sumac. I will also check on the witch hazel, as this may be its flowering and fruiting year, and I am always fascinated by its unusual blossoms that are not unlike tiny sunbursts.
Is it possible that, as we age, the things that once provided us with such a thrill evolve into things that bring us comfort? I know I find tremendous solace in these woods at all times of year, from winter's deep silence to summer's sunrises and autumn's riot of color. Maybe nature knows this and continues to inspire the more artistic among us to paint, dance or sing of those things that, as children, we considered treasures.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
It's just after 10 a.m., and the sun in its altering path is, at the moment, flooding the trees across the dirt road with light that glints upon each leaf. Through them the dark trunks rise and stretch their many arms, providing a sort of basting that binds this whole incredible tapestry of vegetation. Layer upon layer of rich color move the eye away from the most prominent surfaces toward infinity, that place deep in the woods where sunlight is a rare visitor and the wind has little effect.
I am reminded of the hemlock grove not far from here that I discovered one day on a walk when I noticed that the path to my neighbor's pond veered off into a much shadier area. Not being sure at the time of just what land belonged to which neighbor, I passed it by at first. Then one day, I veered off my usual course and suddenly found myself in a deep dark wood that allowed precious little sunlight in, and that only in the sparest beams that managed to force their way through tiny breaks in the canopy. It was so quiet in there, for not only are trees useful as windbreaks and air purifiers, but they muffle sound as well. It was like stepping briefly into another world, into a dark tranquil place where even my footsteps were muffled by the thick carpet composed of many years-worth of fallen hemlock needles. Despite the fact that others have surely been there, I still insist on thinking that it's my discovery and that no one knows about it, or at least no one looks upon it in quite the same way that I do.
It is such a short leap in this busy world from the wonders of childhood to the sensory wasteland that is often the adult experience, from feeling a genuinely innocent awe at a new-found flower to not even knowing or caring that it's there. What happens to dull this wondrous ability, or is it just that it seems silly when an adult feels that ancient thrill at coming upon something new and beautiful? It's hard not to when you live surrounded by trees and when the day's first sign of life isn't generated by another human but by a bird at the feeder or a chipmunk scurrying into its den. It's refreshing to see that wild energy devoted entirely to mindful pursuits and to the very task of living. Nothing in nature is wasted, for every move each animal makes is geared toward its survival, just as is every process going on unseen in those trees across the way. They're all still green for now, with just an odd reddish or prematurely yellowed leaf poking through here, the first to succumb to the shortening days and lessening light.
Early each day around 6 a.m., as sounds of traffic begin to reach me from the distant main road, a new sound greets me, that of a rooster crowing somewhere. And if I close my eyes, it's the 1950's again, and I am back on my grandfather's small farm watching my mother pull eggs out from under the brooding hens. Certain sounds have the ability to do that, to take you back to another time that awakens, if only briefly, old sensations that prove that you are not so different after all from the child you once were.
I don't venture out often enough, but I will as autumn moves in to cool and dry the air and discourage the insects that rule this place in summer. Everything is reaching its peak, from the tall tomato plants sporting their reddening orbs to the phlox that wave in the breeze. The hydrangea blossoms have greened, and the wild grape vine beyond the back slope has reached the road. It rarely bears fruit now, as it hasn't been pruned in ages, and its runners now cover the low vegetation below the sumac. I will also check on the witch hazel, as this may be its flowering and fruiting year, and I am always fascinated by its unusual blossoms that are not unlike tiny sunbursts.
Is it possible that, as we age, the things that once provided us with such a thrill evolve into things that bring us comfort? I know I find tremendous solace in these woods at all times of year, from winter's deep silence to summer's sunrises and autumn's riot of color. Maybe nature knows this and continues to inspire the more artistic among us to paint, dance or sing of those things that, as children, we considered treasures.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
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