After breakfast overlooking the Gulf, I motored down to Alabama Point, another part of Gulf State Park, and sat on the beach for about thirty minutes. I got out my pad and wrote a few notes….

“Sitting on snow-white sand watching blue-green waves roll onshore. A school of medium-sized fish are jumping and leaping about 50 yards offshore. My mind moves to wonder…what is chasing them?

A sanderling wanders toward me from the west and just east of me a family has arrived. The little boy ran to the water with his mask and has already called for a net so he can catch fish he is seeing. I don’t understand the need to capture and control nature. Isn’t it enough to be a quiet observer? This has been a struggle throughout my life…why must we dissect, catch, control all the beauty surrounding us? Why can’t we appreciate beauty for its own sake without destroying it?

Ten feet from my foot the sanderling rests on a mound of sand preening in this early morning sun. Running brown and white speckled feathers through her beak she glances over at me occasionally and then she is done and scurries off to peck among the seaweed for tasty breakfast morsels.

The sand is still cool from the night’s respite. Starlight is still embedded in the crystalline sand. It lingers as the heat of our golden sun star warms it and imbues it with wild, hot solar energy.

An osprey is gliding overhead, freshly caught fish tucked streamline under her white belly feathers.”

And onward to Gulf Islands National Seashore.

I stopped for water and then visited this narrow strip of sand that is surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico on one side and the bay on the other. Nine a.m. and I still had two hours before my appointment back at Alabama Point so I meandered through blue sky, blue-green water and white sand beauty that continued to expand from my sunrise walk. It felt as if the amount of salt water-induced bliss was getting out of hand. It was glorious and wonderful and the best was yet to come. I still had to meet Freddie.

One final stop at the National Seashore to breathe in a nearly perfect water and sky-scape and it was time to leave for the meeting.

Many of us had been summoned to this gathering at 11am. A special guest was arriving and we wanted to be there to see her off.

Freddie had been in rehab a few months, rescued from the pass at Alabama Point. She (or he…the sex was unknown) had been found floating, unable to submerge due to an intestinal blockage and other issues. After being assisted medically, this loggerhead sea turtle was ready to be returned to the Gulf, not far from where she had been found ailing.

Once our volunteers and the NFWS had gathered and the media had arrived, the walk to the water began. It’s probably the most exciting steps I’ve ever walked. Not just because Freddie was returning back to the Gulf but because so many humans cared and were there to cheer her on. Beauty…it was indeed expanding and not only in the outer scenery but in the hearts I saw wide-open surrounding this precious ocean friend.

Freddie crawled from the place her bearers placed her. She got to the water’s edge and stopped. The sand was moist and wet with surf but she just stopped. People formed two lines on either side of her and left the pathway to the water open. Even as I write this tonight, hours after the release, I have to pause and catch my breath. Tears come again as I reflect on the beautiful souls there to welcome her home.

She waited and watched, looking at children and adults cheering her on and finally a wave washed over her. She lifted her head in recognition of the glorious saltwater and who knows what else….for sea turtles don’t share their innermost thoughts. As I knelt on the sand taking photographs I saw in her eye a spark, a light that ignited as the wave called her home. And then….she scurried into the water.

I know what it feels like to come home, to have been away healing, learning….and to find myself back on my home beach watching a sea turtle crawl back into her home….there are no words. There truly are no words. All I know is this–I, too, am home.

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!

While paddling my SUP board in the early morning, when my mind is still halfway between the dream world and this waking realm, I often wonder, Which realm is revealing itself? Last week almost the entire three miles of gliding and communing in my River Cathedral was spent gazing just beneath the surface where scores of small fish intertwined and moved as one body in their schools of life.

I feel amazed. Full of wonder. Grateful.

Yesterday my brother told me of a story he watched about a mother duck and her babies and a group of guys working nearby. They noticed the mother and a few ducklings standing beside a storm drain. One of the guys went over and saw several babies swimming below trying to get back to their mother. The humans got a bucket and fished out each baby. When they were done the mother refused to leave. The humans didn’t understand. Finally another baby was spotted in a pipe so they flushed it out and caught it in the next storm drain and returned it to the mother who THEN waddled off with her kids.

When people say animals don’t have feelings or they are unaware or unconscious or don’t have emotions, I think of stories like these. Intelligence isn’t necessarily the ability to string a series of symbols together to make words, sentences, stories. Intelligence can be the simple act of caring, of compassion–of knowing that you are needed.

The arrogance of humans and our ability to destroy life puts us at the lower end of the intelligence scale…or at least I think it might. Perhaps it depends on how we respond to people, wildlife, places…our planet…when threatened or injured. What do you think? How intelligent are you?

But at the training I made this heart-felt commitment: Please use me wherever you need me. Any beach is fine. I am willing to go where I am most needed.

Still maintaining my pristine beach dream of sunrise bliss and later watching hatchlings crawl from the safety of the nest, down the trench I helped dig to the Gulf where they would swim into the moonlit ocean, I anxiously awaited the call to find out when I could begin. I was already giddy at the thought of all of this ‘nature’ filling my mornings and evenings.

My team leader contacted me this past weekend and I found out I was assigned to the stretch of beach from the city beaches to the state park. Condos, hotels, left-over trash from parties that isn’t cleaned up until sunrise…. I was bummed at first but my team leader was excited. “Nobody ever wants to work this beach.” So I knew that this beach was exactly where I need to be.

I supposed we all want the volunteer assignments that are beautiful and inspire us and thrill us with natural wonder. But the places that are most wounded, most trashed by drunk tourists, and the most over-developed places….those places need us. Specifically the mother loggerheads who come back to their home shore to lay their nests–not knowing it is now covered with beer cans or that concrete has become the new dune line since she was born there–need the help of people willing to walk among the garbage to save her tiny, precious eggs–some of the most endangered animals in the Gulf.

I now understand that sometimes the path put before me isn’t always one of easily-perceived beauty. My task is to find beauty where others don’t want to look and share it.

Where are you willing to serve–to help people, wildlife, wild places, domestic animals? How can you add your energy to making a positive difference in your community? If our world is going to change for the better it is going to take every one of us to make it happen.

It has been a windy week that included two days with such intensity in the blow I stayed off the water. But today, today…calm reigned.

Settling into my new home has given me opportunity to allow the new direction in my life to show itself in the placement of furniture, art and musical instruments. I have listened to an inner prompting to create a music room and in particular, an ocean music room. Besides my piano, guitars, banjo, ukelele, native flutes, drums and other instruments, all of the art work and all books in the room are about the ocean. There are images of dolphins, the Caribbean, the Gulf, orcas, herons and books on all subjects related to the ocean…from healing to science.

Tonight I sat at my piano and allowed music to pour out and as it did, I directed it to the ocean….the one world ocean…and all life contained within it. It felt like taking the time to consciously connect with the ocean and send healing thoughts and music to it was as important as the documentary work I have done since the oil spill. I sense the winds of change moving in my work. I’m not sure what the outcome will be but I trust that as I play my piano or guitars or my African drums I will be guided. Maybe the best each of us can do is consciously connect with our planet, with each other, and simply send love and compassion through our thoughts, music, writing, dance. Maybe healing the planet can begin that simply.

What do you think?

As the National Geographic photograph shows, these creatures have elongated jaws and LOTS of needle-sharp teeth. Some species can grow to lengths of over 10 feet. (gulp). My board is 12.6 feet long. And while I’m not scared of gars, I really have no desire to meet a 10 foot long fish with sharp teeth at 7am on the river. It just seems….unnecessary. Right?

While these fish can be intimidating, they really are quite amazing. They are largely unchanged over the past 100 million years and are often called living fossils. Their scales are so thick Native Americans fabricated arrowheads from them. They usually live in freshwater environments but can also live in brackish water.

While they have startled me when I’m lost in my paddle groove, I have come to look forward to encounters with them. They look at me or my board as they gulp air and then are gone. One day I met one of the biggest ones I’ve seen. He or she was probably five feet in length. Her scales were massive and she was laying on the surface of the water. The big fish didn’t hear me approach but when she saw me and/or my board, she was gone…POOF! I didn’t have any desire to become close personal friends but it was great seeing such an awesome fish.

Each morning I look for the osprey that are nesting along the shore. Today they were fishing, flying down the center of the river looking for breakfast. I saw the mallards and a kingbird. A brown pelican flew alongside for a while. I also look for gars and I didn’t see any during the first 2 miles this morning and I was disappointed. But luckily for me I saw two on the way back and they thrilled me with very close encounters.

Maybe I feel a little like a fossil trying to race my SUP board with kids in their 20′s. Being in the ‘over 50′ group I feel at a disadvantage physically. I have more limitations than my younger cohorts. However, what I lack in physical prowess I make up for in my mature outlook….”OH PLEASE LET ME FINISH AND PLEASE DON’T LET ME BE LAST!”

I’m getting stronger with my regular SUP workout and I am making new friends each day I spend on the river. To all my gar friends–thanks for saying hello and thanks for keeping your needle-sharp teeth off of my board! I’ll see you in the morning.

Suddenly a splash interrupts my reverie and the water’s surface ripples, disrupting the illusion, causing me to come back from Wonderful-Land and concentrate once again on my strokes. Yet inevitably, as the water returns to its mirror-like surface, my mind begins to dream of ways to access the world being reflected from above.

I think of this physical reality, this world of apparent solids and masses, as a mere reflection of what’s on the other side of this this realm. There’s so much more to life than what we see with our physical eyes….

I give my mind freedom to imagine, contemplate, go wherever it wants to go while I’m paddling. If it dreams of watery worlds that lay beyond the surface or enjoys the sensation of flying on watery clouds it’s fine with me. Alice had nothing on my mind’s ability to journey to wild places.

Imagine fish swimming in clouds and turtles sunning themselves upside-down. We create whatever world we wish….think about that. What would you create if given a blank canvas? What’s stopping you?

If you haven’t read my books or viewed my photos I invite you to visit my website and explore…enjoy. Turtle Island Adventures is where you’ll find all sorts of fun.

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