Category: OCEAN

Beauty Expanding

Beauty Expanding

By |

I left the house at 5.30am, destined for the Gulf beaches. A short 20 minute ride later I was standing at Gulf State Park watching the sun rise over the sugar-white dunes. An hour spent walking this undeveloped beach started my day off in a state of beauty. Clear blue-green water lapping at my feet, warm breeze blowing from the southwest bringing salty air from across the water onshore. This balmy hug created a joy within me and so I left the beach ready for breakfast and more beach time. I had an appointment at 11am with a special someone.

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.

The Right Place

The Right Place

By |

As a lover of the ocean and all wildlife therein and especially a lover of sea turtles, you might imagine how excited I was to complete the volunteer training to become a Share the Beach sea turtle volunteer. I had fantasies of walking the undeveloped beach at Gulf State Park and finding turtle tracks that would lead to a nests full of beautiful baby sea turtles as the sun rose each morning I worked.

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.

Winds of Change

Winds of Change

By |

The wind shifted this morning. The smell of marsh and swamp scented the air as I glided over clouds and glints of sunshine on the mirror-still water. My heart expanded to greet the osprey as she sat on her nest overhead. Fish popped the surface of the water creating ripples that reached out to me as I steered my board through liquid bliss.

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?

Green to Blue

Green to Blue

By |

A few weeks ago I began to realize that I was leaving the mountains of western North Carolina. I mean really realize that my time here was growing short. As I explored my connection to the land, pulling on one thread of the tapestry of my life unraveled awareness that has helped me understand and prepare for the leap to big water.

About that same time, a friend of mine was having an art opening in downtown Asheville so I decided to attend. The night of the gallery reception I was chatting with my artist friend and a friend of his walked up with a musical instrument case. There was a Celtic music event around the corner at Firestorm Books that started in about an hour. It gave me time to walk next door and eat at Tupelo Honey, one of my favorite Asheville restaurants.

It was a small venue but the music….the MUSIC! Only in Asheville, I thought. One duo sang a song that touched the heart of my grief and almost perfectly described my move from mountains to shore. A few of the lyrics are below (here’s a link if you’d like to listen).

Don’t turn to the green hills of Antrim
Fermanagh’s behind you, it’s time to move on.
Look onwards to Glasgow, and all your tomorrows
The future lies there, and it’s waiting for you.
As the green crosses over to meet with the blue.

If the wings of the eagle could carry you over
To the lands of the prairie, then surely you’d fly
But an ocean so wide, and a distant country
So far from your own land is no place to die.

So don’t turn to look on the green hills of Antrim
Fermanagh’s behind you, it’s time to move on.
Look onwards to Glasgow, and all your tomorrows
The future lies there, and it’s waiting for you.
As the green crosses over, as the green crosses over,
To meet with the blue.

One morning as I approached my favorite view from the mountain, the green valley below unfolded surrounded by towering mountains that arose from the far side. The words from the chorus came singing through my soul: As the green crosses over to meet with the blue. And I thought of the Irish and Scottish people who were the first white settlers in this area and how they must have loved this land for it looks so similar to many places from their home countries. Then I thought about my own heritage and connection to Cornwall and the beauty of green hills stopping at the blue ocean and knew in that moment that my soul was calling me back to big water, to blue water. And I knew peace.

I am not sure what work will unfold for me along the Gulf Coast, but with everything I know and am, it is the exact right next step for my path, for me. Being land-locked for almost 20 years has served a purpose and now it’s time to go home.

My heart is big enough to love both mountains and ocean yet I have a strong desire to help the Ocean and all creatures who live in and around it. It’s geographically challenging to do that from 2300 feet above sea level, perched on the side of a mountain. I want to feel the sand between my toes, breathe the salt air and plant my roots once again in more southern latitudes where the vast expanse of the Gulf of Mexico calls me to my life’s work.

I won’t turn to look back on the green mountains, Asheville’s behind me, it’s time to move on. I look onwards to the Gulf and all my tomorrows, the future lies there, and it’s waiting for me. As the green crosses over to meet with the blue.

I launch April 3rd….it’s time to move on.

Passion to Proceed

Passion to Proceed

By |

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.