As I pulled out onto the dark highway, the delicate crescent moon hung directly over Venus. It appeared as if a gossamer thread connected the planet of love to the sliver of light. And then, within moments, wispy clouds obscured the planet and the moon appeared lonely in the immense pre-dawn sky.
I had awakened at 12.22am and spent hours wide awake with no apparent reason. Nothing was ticking through my mind but finally I surrendered and got up before the 4.30am alarm sounded. I made coffee and waited until nearly 5am to depart for my Sunday morning sea turtle patrol…my most favorite time of the week.
The white sand appeared blue as the first hint of light made its first tender caresses of the day. This is the time when softness and gentleness prevail. When we are gently invited to engage in life…to be present and awake.
As the sun claimed the day, light reflected in pastels that first appeared as a pale mist of color. This quickly changed as the intensity grew until the sand and tidal pools and waves changed to metallic pastels. Every sense became alive with color.
As I walked, three guitar fish got a gentle push back into the Gulf after getting trapped in tidal pools. Their eyes blinked at me as I wished them well and watched the tidal pool current take them back home, back into the Gulf. Go, go, go! Swim my friends!
If only I could express through words the feelings of sheer joy and exhilaration experienced. While seemingly shared only with a great blue heron, a few gulls and two or three sanderlings, and the guitar fish, it truly felt as if there was no separation of myself from the Universe. As if everything within me was pulsing in harmony with life. The sweetest sense of oneness continued for the nearly three hours spent on the shore.
Several days ago I had a dream and in the dream told a friend that I had always been able to hear music in my head and had come to accept it as normal for me rather than think I was crazy. This morning, this amazing saltwater morning, I heard music as my toes caressed the soft, cool sand. As I waded in shallow tidal pools it continued and as beautiful shells presented themselves to me, I heard it. And even now, as I sit reviewing images and reliving emotions, I hear the inner music, that vibrant chord activated when soul and nature interact to create inner harmony.
Venus is the planet of love, beauty, prosperity and harmony. It teaches us how to love and appreciate life and how to spread happiness and tenderness. It was coming into alignment with the Moon early this morning and had I slept later, I would have missed the magnificent sight of Venus hanging on a silver cord from the crescent moon…a sight that will continue to inspire me to listen to the music created when I allow the strings of my soul to be touched by Light, by Life.
The white sand felt cool on my feet as I stepped out of my flip flops at the bottom of the dune. I turned to gaze out over the Gulf, metallic turquoise in color. The sun was just beginning to warm the sky with golden light.
There was no wind or big waves to disrupt the surface of the water. Purple, teal, pale orange, gold and indigo danced in slowly-moving geometric patterns. As I raised my camera to capture the image, I realized I couldn’t discern the horizon. It was blurred with low-hanging pink clouds. Water and sky blended as elemental spirits celebrated the day.
My excuse to be on the beach at sunrise was sea turtle nest patrol. I was supposed to be looking for mother sea turtle tracks but admit distraction occurred, culprit of the gentle, soft beauty emanating from the sea and sky.
As I approached the edge of the water, where saltwater slowly pushed against the sand, a little shark swam by as it fed in the shallows. I don’t think most birds were awake as it was quiet and still topside while the toothy dawn feeders, who live below the surface, were already enjoying a tasty breakfast.
The sand welcomed my happy feet. Every step was a celebration of beauty, of life. There was no separation as I breathed in harmony with life on the shore.
This is how we’re supposed to live–each step one of gratitude and recognition of the oneness of life…in a state of balance and harmony.
Each color was a note. An osprey diving just offshore gave a dramatic increase in the tempo and crescendo, those elements that create tension in a composition. A sanderling scurrying along the water’s edge created sixteenth notes, quickening the symphony. Dolphins offshore gifted grace and rhythm to the song. A tidal pool added a bridge, that contrasting bit of music leading back to the original melody. The song still echoes within my being as I sit inland among the live oaks and reflect upon that glorious two hours at the shore.
Curacao…a beautiful island in the southern Caribbean
Two days before Earth Day four years ago I was underwater. The strong taste of petroleum filled my mouth with every inhale. I signaled my dive buddies to surface under the star-filled night sky. Their air was fine. I didn’t know the source of the weird taste so we submerged but I stayed rather shallow and kept the dive brief.
I remember surfacing and turning back to look over my shoulder into the dark Ocean. A wind swept across the water and I felt a chill that shook my core. It was a very ominous way to end a dive.
A few days later I was sitting in the Atlanta airport after the flight from Curacao and saw the footage showing Deepwater Horizon in flames. When I am in the Caribbean I unplug as much as possible so had missed the news coverage of the explosion until I was almost back to Asheville. As I sat in disbelief on the vinyl-covered seat, clarity came and I knew it was time to go home.
Years ago I had promised the Gulf that I would help but didn’t know how. I heard a very distinct reply on the inner…You will know when it’s time to come home. The summons had been given. It was time.
I tracked the oil after arriving back to my mountain home and timed my arrival on the Alabama Coast, my birth place, a few days before the brown goo arrived. I wanted to document the unspoiled marshes and shores. I could sense the menace approaching but could do nothing except be a witness.
I remember one day I had been to Fort Morgan and was driving back to my mom’s on Bon Secour Bay. I stopped by a marsh and took photographs of large, orange boom in Mobile Bay. When I got back in the car I lost it. I mean really, really lost it. I started sobbing and screaming….how could we do this to our planet? It was as if I was experiencing a panic attack for our planet. I thought that I was witnessing the beginning of the end of life as we knew it.
One day as I walked the trail to the beach at Bon Secour Wildlife Refuge, I crested the top of the trail on the dune and saw before me a crime scene. Big blobs of smelly, brown goo were scattered all along the beach. I called the 800 number to report it and stayed for what seemed hours until somebody came to document it. Tearfully I sat on the sand and not knowing what to do I started singing to the Gulf of Mexico….I prayed and asked forgiveness for all humans. But mostly I grieved. My tears fell among crude oil staining the beach.
When the oil first came ashore it was marked with driftwood and gloves…I couldn’t help but enjoy the message this glove was giving.
One week each month for the first year I returned to the Gulf of Mexico and documented seven areas of beach beginning at Fort Morgan and going to Fort Pickens, Florida. I remember a day in early July when I was standing at a tidal pool watching a little fish gasp in the grip of death as the bubbling crude oil, dispersant and salt water suffocated her. I was pretty close to the end of my coping skills. After days of breathing the benzene-ridden air, dealing with heat and the horrors of what I was witnessing I literally almost lost my shit, so to speak, watching that fish die.
Standing with tears flowing and sobbing I heard someone call my name. It jerked me out of the spiral of grief and I saw my friend Sherry, who I hadn’t seen in years, coming toward me. She gave me a big hug and we stood for a moment. I believe God or Mother Earth…or both… sent her to me that day. She was working on a clean-up crew and just ‘happened’ to be there.
My spiritual practice of meditation helped me make it through that year. My friend and teacher from England pulled me aside at a workshop almost a year after the spill and asked how I was doing. I told her how difficult it was to witness such needless destruction. She told me that there was a reason I was witnessing it and to stand firm in my love of the planet. Many friends from all over the world followed my blog posts and sent support to the Gulf and all life within and around it. If my actions could bring the truth to a few people, it was worth it.
The process of personal healing has been long after that year. The journey back to wholeness led me to return home permanently to the Gulf Coast. While I haven’t really understood what my role here is now, I have enjoyed each moment spent with sea turtle hatchlings, manatees, ospreys, eagles….the salt marshes and river. The very things that broke my heart and spirit have been my healers.
Much of what I shared during the spill and cleanup was what was happening on the beaches. The personal struggle was small compared to the ecosystem and the community of relationships within it. Yet humans, too, are a part of the community of nature. We are deeply engaged in the cycle of life whether we acknowledge it or not.
A week with Joanna Macy in Rowe, Massachusetts, allowed a group of thirty of us, working to make a positive difference on the planet, have a safe place to facilitate our healing and help us understand the process that is happening globally. Perhaps the most important lesson learned that week was that all of us are needed to, step-by-step, be midwives to the Great Awakening or as Joanna calls it, The Great Turning.
We cannot afford the luxury of turning our eyes away from the horrendous abuses humans do to the planet, to animals, to each other. We are all connected…we are one family of life surviving on a living planet.
A kid’s book I created to explain the oil spill in a simple, understandable way to all ages.
This Earth Day, let us remember our connection to our magnificent planet…the Ocean, sea turtles, dolphins, whales, otters, rivers, osprey, eagles, the kid across the street, the massive oak trees and the tiniest flower. We are One.
The taste of petroleum in my regulator on the dive in Curacao couldn’t be explained. On an energetic level I believe I connected with the disaster happening in the Gulf of Mexico while I was in Curacao, in the southernmost island of the Caribbean. It showed me, without doubt, that I am connected to the Ocean…the One Ocean…and to all life. And so are you my friends
To order my kid’s book on the oil spill or other books….please CLICK THIS LINK or visit Coastal Art Center in Orange Beach, AL or Page and Palette in Fairhope, AL.
In the wee hours of the morning I found myself driving to Destin, Florida for a morning of diving. The two hour drive would give me a chance to wake up. Of course the 63 degree temperature was helpful in chasing slumber from my groggy mind.
It was a perfectly beautiful start to the morning with clear skies and a stillness that foretold of potentially great diving. There was barely a ripple on Perdido Bay and Pensacola Bay.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon as I neared Destin when I received a call from the dive shop that the trip was cancelled due to high wind and rough seas. I was shocked…wind? Evidently the wind was blowing from the east and offshore seas were over six feet. Ugh….I was happy to miss that! But in truth, I felt that odd intuitive uneasiness had been with me since the day before.
I had my tanks serviced at a local dive shop and asked them to put a mixture of gas known as nitrox in the tanks. Nitrox is a rich oxygen mixture used in diving. It’s beneficial in that you build up less nitrogen, which is good. Nitrogen is an inert gas and if you apply the laws of physics related to pressure you know that a gas under pressure….oh, bother. The short version is it is better to have less nitrogen in the bloodstream and nitrox, being oxygen rich, makes that a reality. The downside is that breathing a richer mixture of oxygen you have more oxygen in your system because you are under pressure from being under water….it won’t bubble like nitrogen but the partial pressure of oxygen has to be closely monitored so you don’t overdose on oxygen. Making sense? Oxygen can be toxic if you get too much. So there are depth limits for each mixture of nitrox.
Anyway….the mixture I asked for was 32% oxygen (instead of air which is 21%). The guy at the shop didn’t have me analyze the tanks there…which is the usual protocol. When I got home and analyzed my tanks the digital readout kept going up and up. It didn’t stop at 31.7 or 31.8 or 32….it kept going to 35.7 for one tank and 35.9 for the other. Hmmmm. The maximum operating depth for that mix is 95 feet and that was the depth of the first dive. I don’t push limits so this concerned me.
I haven’t used my nitrox analyzer in a couple years so perhaps the sensor is bad. I calibrated it before using it and everything seemed to be working perfectly. But it made me nervous. I could dive that mix and stay shallower but I simply don’t push my limits when diving. And I always like to leave room for contingencies.
So when the call came canceling the dives I wasn’t really upset. The trip already had a weird feel to it. And even though I had planned to re-analyze the tanks at the shop in Destin before using them, it was almost a relief to scrub the trip. Once I get that ‘feeling’ –especially about a dive trip–its best to just not do it.
I had two hours before the natural foods store opened for my weekly shopping in Pensacola so I headed to the Gulf Islands National Seashore for an early-morning visit with the beach. It was very chilly and the wind was blowing. Offshore I could see jagged rollers dotting the horizon. Oh, I was happy to be on land!
Peace enveloped me as I strolled along the edge…that place where big water and earth come together. It had been a while since I treated myself to sunrise on the shore. With the Sunday morning sea turtle team duties ending September 1st, nothing had motivated me to get up at 4.30am for a sunrise visit to the beach. Pity really.
Without the distraction of my heavy camera I found myself more present and focused. The glory of nature brought me into balance and filled a longing for the elements I didn’t realize I had. I miss the mountains and the opportunity to connect daily to such immense energy as the Appalachians yet equally important to me is the chance to dance with waves and wind of the ocean…the one world ocean of which the Gulf of Mexico is a part.
The theme of self-care was really evident with the nitrox mix-up and the rough seas…and the quiet time spent wandering the white sands of the beach. I left the gulls and sanderlings and beautiful, salty water feeling clearer and more focused. And happy to have had an excuse to witness the sunrise on the shore.
Sometimes the biggest lesson comes from the smallest creature.
Last night a sea turtle hatchling that had been attempting to crawl out of her nest…a nest successfully exited three nights prior by 99 brothers and sisters….was helped along by our sea turtle team as we excavated the nest to gather statistics for USFW Service. The sand was so wet and the empty eggshells so packed that she was stuck. As stuck as I’ve ever seen a hatchling.
For three days after the initial hatching, the massive boil where her siblings made it to the Gulf of Mexico, volunteers listened to her scratching. That may not seem long to us but imagine being in the dark, surrounded by empty shells. A brother nearby also struggling but not having the strength to survive. Another sibling stuck in her eggshell but losing the energy necessary to make it.
But one little hatchling was determined to live, to see her ocean home. Imagine what strength and willpower it took.
When she was removed from the nest there was only one intention….CRAWL TO THE SEA! She never slowed down. Never hesitated. She was focused in her spirit, in the instincts that called her home.
In putting together a short video on her journey I chose a song that illustrated musically her journey and while watching the finished product realized that she is an inspiration to us all.
Anchoring deep in our core….feeling the strength rise up within as we work to build resilience and power….oh, yes. She is a master teacher for us.
What is your goal? What is your passion? What do you want to bring to this planet? What is stopping you?
(Thank you baby turtle and Pure Barre Eastern Shore for helping me feel my strength and realize I’m so much stronger than I knew!)
As I pulled out onto the dark highway, the delicate crescent moon hung directly over Venus. It appeared as if a gossamer thread connected the planet of love to the sliver of light. And then, within moments, wispy clouds obscured the planet and the moon appeared lonely in the immense pre-dawn sky.
The white sand appeared blue as the first hint of light made its first tender caresses of the day. This is the time when softness and gentleness prevail. When we are gently invited to engage in life…to be present and awake.
As the sun claimed the day, light reflected in pastels that first appeared as a pale mist of color. This quickly changed as the intensity grew until the sand and tidal pools and waves changed to metallic pastels. Every sense became alive with color.
If only I could express through words the feelings of sheer joy and exhilaration experienced. While seemingly shared only with a great blue heron, a few gulls and two or three sanderlings, and the guitar fish, it truly felt as if there was no separation of myself from the Universe. As if everything within me was pulsing in harmony with life. The sweetest sense of oneness continued for the nearly three hours spent on the shore.
Several days ago I had a dream and in the dream told a friend that I had always been able to hear music in my head and had come to accept it as normal for me rather than think I was crazy. This morning, this amazing saltwater morning, I heard music as my toes caressed the soft, cool sand. As I waded in shallow tidal pools it continued and as beautiful shells presented themselves to me, I heard it. And even now, as I sit reviewing images and reliving emotions, I hear the inner music, that vibrant chord activated when soul and nature interact to create inner harmony.
Venus is the planet of love, beauty, prosperity and harmony. It teaches us how to love and appreciate life and how to spread happiness and tenderness. It was coming into alignment with the Moon early this morning and had I slept later, I would have missed the magnificent sight of Venus hanging on a silver cord from the crescent moon…a sight that will continue to inspire me to listen to the music created when I allow the strings of my soul to be touched by Light, by Life.
