Category: Gulf Oil Spill

Standing Up to a Big Blow–Lesson in Life from My SUP Board

Standing Up to a Big Blow–Lesson in Life from My SUP Board

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Yesterday morning started with a visit to Gulf State Park before the sun peeked above the horizon. I arrived early for my first sea turtle volunteer patrol walk because I wanted to take a few photographs before meeting my walking partners. It was serene and lovely and the Gulf of Mexico was gently rolling like it sometimes does. No shore birds were out yet so the only sound I heard was the shuuusshing of sand and water and shells tumbling together.

I met my walking partners and we headed out for our walk to the Gulf Shores Public Beach. We immediately met a group of giggly young folks drinking beer and smoking….yes….before sunrise. We had been warned that we might see left-over partiers from the pre-Hangout Music Festival day. And it only got worse as we neared the music festival staging area. Never mind sea turtle crawls…we were busy dodging condoms floating in the tidal pools, beer cans, liquor bottles, articles of clothing, half-burned cigarettes…not the usual sight on these white sand beaches.

The once ‘public beach’ was fenced off so as to not allow the public inside. Or sea turtles that might not have received the press package about the festival and thus altered their egg-laying plans. We carefully watched for sea turtle tracks as we tiptoed through all manner of human nastiness. Almost two years ago I was tiptoeing through volatile crude oil on the beach but today I felt volatile. A few days earlier the City of Gulf Shores bulldozed sand dunes with sea oats growing on them to make way for this parade of the worst of humanity. If you or I had picked a sea oat on our own property we’d be ticketed. If we had bulldozed a dune full of sea oats we might be in jail. I guess it just depends on who you are and who you know and how much you pay the right people. I don’t know what to think after witnessing this and hearing loud diesel generators and buses running non-stop. Talk about your green festivals!

After completing the turtle nest patrol I walked in the opposite direction, into Gulf State Park. Shores mostly untouched by development called to me as I walked in the soft, cool sand. I reflected back to when I worked in the park as naturalist–over 30 years ago–and the frustration I felt by the encroaching development and the political demands placed on the resources within the park. I remembered something I wrote in my first book, Sharks On My Fin Tips: “I left the Gulf Coast many years ago feeling hopeless in my efforts to help the land amid hungry developers yet on that day (a visit after Hurricane Ivan) I felt a renewed sense of commitment. I could use a tool that might truly make a difference–my words.” (p. 11).

Another quote from the book also haunted me as I walked back to my car, “Did I abandon this land when I left it many years ago? Had I left home, in the truest sense of the word?”

This morning I needed to be on salt water, away from the crowds and connected with the elements to ponder the questions that were raised within me yesterday. I am not a grouchy, un-musical person. I love music and play piano, guitar, flute, drums….it’s part of me. But profit at any cost? Had I left 21 years ago and returned to find that profit and money–greed–were still the determining factors along the coast? The dune is in the way….just bulldoze it. Never mind that it’s against the law! And fence off the public beach and don’t allow people to visit it unless they pay the $150+ to attend the festival. Does anyone else feel frustrated at this kind of behavior? These double-standards? This profit-at-any-cost mentality?

So…..I drove to Johnson Beach, part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore. After showing my annual pass and I.D. I drove to a boardwalk and couldn’t help noticing that both the Gulf and Sound were very much affected by the strong and steady ESE winds. Oops…so much for a calm, contemplative morning.

After unloading my board and gear, I walked to the Sound and was nearly knocked off my SUP board as soon as I stood up. The wind was really kicking. Rather than paddle against it with no warm-up, I decided to just do a downwind paddle and then deal with the paddle back after my body was ready for the assault of wind against woman.

The downwind run was screaming. I was flying and my thoughts were far from the anger and frustration of the previous day. Concentrating on staying balanced with a wicked back and cross-wind was my only focus. In 15 minutes I covered an amazing distance. How awesome that I’d get to paddle against that crazy blow to get back to my take-out point. Honestly, that’s not what I was thinking.

As soon as I came out of the calm canal I had drifted into and faced the wind, it caught my body and tried to push me back into the serene water. Who wouldn’t like that? But I really wanted to get back to my car. The breeze (ha…breeze) was so strong that I dropped to my knees. That helped but I was still making little progress. Finally, I sat back on my heels and finally my blade starting generating forward motion.

Being in this prayer position, I decided to say a prayer to gain understanding about the struggles I was having emotionally from yesterday’s experiences. I started thinking about the land and water and wildlife still being exploited for human greed. I felt weary of the entire human-dumb-ass behaviors which was exacerbated by the weariness I began to feel as I paddled into the wind. As I struggled to paddle, I thought how 30 years ago I struggled to make a difference along the coast. How I’d given up and let the ‘human wind of development’ push me away and relinquish my dream to help people appreciate and care for this beautiful place. It was relatively easy to just let go and forget the developers and others who always put wildlife and the Earth last–dead last. I let myself go into ecological numbness. I didn’t know how to deal with the grief about the planet so I just shut down.

But that oil spill…remember THAT oil spill? It’s what called me home.

It’s not easy standing up against strong forces that want to push over everything in their path to make a buck. It’s sometimes almost impossible to stand and fight greedy humans. So maybe I can alter my approach and drop lower and catch less ‘wind’ but still keep going, keep going forward. Or maybe I might have to crawl a while and make seemingly little progress like I did at Johnson Beach when I sat on the back of my board in shallow water and used my toes to crawl along the bottom as I rested my arms and shoulders. The key is to keep moving and keep working to spread the beauty of this place and speak up against those who truly do not care for anything but money and power. They will fall…eventually. Nature is more powerful. Ask Hurricane Ivan. Or Katrina. Humans have no power compared to the power of nature. Okay….I understand, I thought.

I got back to my take-out point and sat on my board for a long time contemplating life….watching the endangered Least Tern feeding just a few feet from my board, wondering if they knew they were endangered (no…of course not) and thinking how they go on regardless and continue to live and enjoy life. I watched families playing along the water’s edge and Great Blue Herons waiting for fishermen and women to reel in their breakfast. I realized, in those long, blissful moments spent bobbing up and down on my board, that I don’t have to stand up to power and money-hungry humans alone. Many of us feel the same way. We can proceed little by little to speak out, write, work…whatever we have to do…to save this amazing place from annihilation at the hands of those who fail to understand and appreciate the treasure it is…just for the beauty and life it contains. Not because it can generate a profit.

Stand Up 4 The Gulf…something you might find interesting and might like to help build!

Passion to Proceed

Passion to Proceed

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I am sitting at the counter at my mom’s kitchen gazing out at Mobile Bay. Just a pause before writing.

I’m presenting a program at Gulf Shores Library tomorrow morning and was reviewing my A/V presentations to see which one I’ll use. In reviewing my library of programs one I put together showing the worst part of the oil spill at the Gulf Shores, Alabama area caught my attention. Tears poured down my face as I watched and recalled vividly the heartbreak experienced by so many of us that love this area. And then I felt a surge of passion and love for the Gulf Coast that caused a transcendent moment to spontaneously occur within me. It provided an amazing moment of clarity that sealed the deal, so to speak, for my move back to the Gulf Coast.

Over a decade ago I felt called to return to the Gulf Coast to work but as I stood on the shore with warm, salty waters lapping over my toes, I heard in my mind…’Not yet…but you will know when to return.’

When the oil spill first happened and very often for 18 months, I made the trip from Asheville, NC to coastal Alabama to document…to WITNESS what what happening here. I felt the call to return but I didn’t expect to move back. Little-by-little, however, I felt that this was the big leap needed to fulfill a promise I made to the Gulf those many years ago.

A few months ago I put my mountain home ‘on the market’ and waited. Within these past two weeks everything has begun to come together. Two incredible people have connected with “The Cathedral of Trees” and immediately understood the power of the home and land I have been blessed to call home for over five years. They decided to become the new owners of this special place. And just yesterday, I finalized a contract on a nice cottage home near the Magnolia River that will nurture me and my work as I leap back to the headwaters of my life. The place of my birth.

With every major change in life there comes anxiety and fear and those emotions were doing their best to rattle me. But when I reconnected with the immense love and passion I have for the earth, specifically this area of amazing beauty…my coastal Alabama home…all doubt was erased and the anxiety and fear begin to diminish.

I have dedicated my life to help our beautiful water planet. How thrilled I am to feel doors opening so that I can continue my work here, in this sacred place. There’s a song that has been my theme for this next stage of my life as it unfolds…Homeward Bound….”Set me free to find my calling and I’ll return to you somehow.” My heart is very, very full and I am so grateful.

Gratitude for a Sense of Place

Gratitude for a Sense of Place

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It took me a while to make the decision to leave the Blue Ridge Mountains but when I did my compass pointed south, or specifically– southwest. The live oak trees draped with Spanish moss whisper my name as the wind rattles their waxy, hard leaves against each other. The smell of coastal Alabama soil, that sandy loam, lies waiting for me to come home, to walk barefoot and connected with its magnificence.

In the past 18 months I made over ten trips to my home to document the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and with each trip, it was more difficult to leave. I felt my work was just scratching the surface, that there is so much more I could do, that I wanted the Gulf of Mexico to raise up through me to protect Herself. All of these reasons resound in my mind but more important than anything is an intense desire, a burning within my soul, to be home. I can’t really explain it, although my mind has tried to make sense of it. It feels like my bones responding to a homing signal. Maybe I’m experiencing the same pull that monarch butterflies feel or migratory birds. It’s like an internal signal has been activated and I’m ready to go.

Meanwhile, amid this magnetic pull back to the Alabama Gulf Coast, I have my home for sale and am dealing with flaky buyers who change their minds like they were changing their dinner order. Dealing with the ups and downs of selling my beautiful home is wearing on me. But my vision is still crystal clear; I won’t allow insensitive buyers to detract me from my intention.

I love the land here in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The nearby Smoky Mountains are a true spiritual home for me and have been since I was a child. Living here has been healing and restorative and has boosted my creativity and connected me with incredible people. All to prepare me to return back to my home and apply everything I’ve learned here to help an area that was heavily damaged with the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. And no matter what the slick BP advertisements and tourist boards say, there is still substantial problems in areas along the coast and a looming unknown regarding wildlife and Gulf health. I want to be there to do whatever I can to help this place recover.

And still….still…beyond the reasons I think I’m headed home, I really don’t know what I will be doing help the communities or wildlife. And that doesn’t matter really because I’m taking the first step and that is to be willing to sell my mountain home and move back to the place where I was born in total trust that I will be shown what to do when I am there. I am willing to take this leap.

When I was walking this morning in the frosty, mountain air I realized that the biggest surprise of everything going on in my life now is this intense love I have for the Gulf of Mexico, the shores, bays, rivers and people. My bones resonate with the tides there and for this deep sense of place, I am truly grateful. I never realized how powerful the love of a place could be and how being totally committed to helping protect it can change the course of a life.

Excerpt from my book Sharks On My Fin Tips: A Wild Woman’s Adventures with Nature–“Like many coastal species that begin life in the brown waters of Weeks Bay, I began my life on the shores of this tiny estuary. I grew up amid herons, egrets, baby crabs, shrimp and mullet with the dark-brown mud squishing between my young toes. The smell of salt marsh filled my being and was imprinted on my soul only hours after I breathed my first breath….And like the creatures birthed in the bay, I too moved away from its tranquil shores yet I will always feel the pulsation of saltwater in my blood like a magnet, drawing me home.”

Where do you find a sense of place? What place calls to your bones?

Change Agents

Change Agents

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On September 23rd I was in a small jet flying to Atlanta from Asheville. We flew over Lake Julian and the coal-fired power plant. Horrendous, black piles of death lay below. Earth raped as a commodity. I was glad to be headed for Rowe, Massachusetts where I would be spending a week with Joanna Macy and many other activists and lovers of our planet.

The first night, 68 of us met with Joanna. We listened as this wise woman shared about the history of humanity’s relationship with Earth. Most humans have used Earth as a supply house and a sewer. Finally, many are beginning to see the Earth as alive, as living. After she shared this and more, each of us stated our name and something of Earth we would protect. After feeling so isolated and alone documenting the Gulf Oil Spill, it was balm to my soul to witness so many people standing up to protect a place, animal, plant…body of water, mountain, meadow.

I left that first night’s gathering feeling the sweetness and power of people uniting for the common good. And with this happy feeling I had to negotiate walking on a small, wooded roadway at night with no light. I had to use my spider-sense, my bear and cougar sense–my wild woman sense that is connected with the wet, deep darkness and rich, loamy Earth. The part of me that sees without eyes and knows from the sound of gravel or grass underfoot where I am. I later wrote, “Amidst the inky blackness, rich and deep, silver drops from dark green leaves splatter and fall to the ground. I walk between two worlds, caught in the middle between lies and truth. May I stand with an open heart and bear witness.”

There was so much I learned and experienced that week at Rowe Camp and Conference Center and there are many nuggets of wisdom that will be with me as my work at the Gulf continues. However, one particular concept stands out. John Seed, an activist who worked to protect trees in the forests of Australia, had the idea that when we stand up to protect something on Earth, it’s really that place or thing protecting itself through us. In example, “I am not Simone protecting the Gulf of Mexico, I am the Gulf of Mexico protecting itself through this piece of humanity.”

And so to all those working on the Gulf, we are united in our efforts by the Gulf of Mexico. And for all environmental efforts, it is the same. Reframing activism, in this way, shifted my thinking and helped me feel the whole of all involved in working to protect and heal our planet.

Whatever you love about Earth and are willing to stand up for, say it out loud in the context written above by John Seed. What do you notice?

Some ideas shared by Joanna: Healing the planet comes from seeing the relationships and interrelationships. Action is something I am! (Not something I do). Don’t wait for the blueprint or plan as an activist. You cannot predict the synergy that occurs when you take steps and risks. Have the courage to move out with ideas. Power is an organic outcome of synergy. Evolutionary forces are wanting to work through us.

After lunch one day I climbed a steep trail and sat on a rock at the top of a mountain and heard this: “When you are called to witness a devastation to Earth, you serve as one of a council who then reports to the whole. Tell the truth of what you see. See with your heart.” And so my work continues whether I’m reading articles on the Gulf Oil Spill and passing them on to others or on the beaches documenting the huge chunks of tar washing up or speaking with school kids.

Many times I have struggled with my reason for doing the work at the Gulf and have asked myself questions like: “Is anybody really paying attention?” “All this time and energy here and is it making a difference?” Joanna reminded us to release the need for our work to make a difference or reach people or be successful. The most important thing to do is to keep doing the work, allowing the creativity to continue to move through us. The key is simply to keep doing it.

“We are so much more than we see right now. The powers that brought us here are so powerful we cannot even imagine.” Joanna reminded us that we have help and we’re not alone. What an important message for all who are working as change agents for Earth.

What are you willing to stand up and protect?

To learn more about my work, please visit my website Turtle Island Adventures.

Moving from Apathy to Action

Moving from Apathy to Action

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As I was enjoying a quiet breakfast I picked up my latest copy of Dive Training magazine and started reading a story about marine species that are headed for extinction and how they got that way. Not light reading, especially while attempting digestion.

It’s much easier to set aside articles such as this and watch squirrels frolic on the deck or watch my ginger cat friend play. However, when the Deepwater Horizon exploded I knew I could no longer be an armchair activist and so for the last year and a half I have forced myself to pay attention to articles and other information that helps me understand what is happening on our water planet and why.

Meet the Goliath grouper. This amazing fish can reach 800 pounds and grow to eight feet in length. They were found along Atlantic and Gulf coasts of Florida, the Caribbean and down the coast of Brazil. Their population decreased 80% in ten years. Two reasons are cited for their decline. First, channelization of the Everglades. Baby Goliath’s live in mangroves and when channels are created to drain the swamps and wetlands, the home for juveniles disappear. The second reason has to do with reproduction habits. During their annual spawning more than 100 would gather in key places. Since they are so big they were easy to see and catch. Dive Training writes that over one quarter of their spawning sites have been fished out and many have fewer than 10 fish left to gather.

When I read this my bowl of yogurt, cashews and apples almost became a projectile. I am so angry and saddened by continued reports of countless issues where humans take and take and take resources and repayment comes in the form of toxic wastes and by-products of a consumer-based society where human selfishness is elevated to new heights on a daily basis it seems. I took a few breaths and continued reading. Thanks to wildlife biologists and laws, change is occurring. Some aggregations have doubled in size. Recovery will be slow but it is beginning.

There are humans that give back and have love and compassion for our planet and all of it’s inhabitants.

I have had amazing underwater experiences as a diver and one was with a Goliath grouper I met in Key Largo, Florida. Here’s what I wrote about him in my photography book, Place of Spirit. “Goliath in size, the grouper is strangely engaging. He approaches me, flares his gills, and rattles his gill plates. I am not certain if it is a sign of affection or a prelude to aggression. His spirit and energy match his physical size and dwarf me in comparison. His small, beady eyes intimidate me as I swim to another part of the wreck. How could this reef-dweller find me worth of investigation? When his attention turns to another diver, there is no sorrow for I feel exposed, as if he sees beyond my mask to a place where spirit dwells. Even with my discomfort, I am grateful this deacon of the deep makes contact.”

Part of my personal commitment to taking action is to educate and immerse myself in saltwater environments to learn and commune with these sacred places and the animals that live there. And then to share what I learn with others in order to stir people to appreciate and love our natural world. If love and respect for the planet can be cultivated within humanity, we can make a positive difference.

What are you willing to do to help create love, appreciation and respect for Earth and all beings that live here?

To order my book, Place of Spirit, or other books I have written, please visit my website Turtle Island Adventures.