Orange Grove at Peacock Springs State Park…water completely covering lower platform and nearly to upper platform
We have had a LOT of rain lately. So has Florida. Photos I took last week of my favorite cave diving site inundated with river water and duck weed prove that. It has officially rained so much my brain feels waterlogged.
Radar from 3am
It stated here about 3am with loud ka-booms in the distance. For the next 90 minutes lightning never seemed to turn off. And the rain was torrential.
A break this morning gave a window of opportunity to drive to Pure Barre in Daphne for a workout. The cloud cover, sprinkles all day and general threat of more weather has made for a very lazy day. The small bit of work accomplished included balancing my check book and vacuuming the house. Otherwise I have felt completely content with dreaming up ideas…like building an ark, creating a video of the top ten items that float down the Magnolia River in a flood and what to do when the frog armies demand quarters in my home due to high water outside.
5pm radar…looks about the same as 3am.
With frequent lightning, being productive on the computer isn’t much of an option. I’m behind in uploading photographs and filing them and backing them up but my computer remains unplugged…safely unplugged.
So I hunker down with my cat buddies and await the passing of the storms. Sometimes that’s the best thing we can do…simply await the passing of the storm and move forward when the coast is clear.
The coming of this down-time is perfect after a potent week. Now comes the time for assessing the next step and cultivating a plan. So thank you rain. While I don’t intend to build an ark, there are others radical ideas brewing.
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.
Presenting my children’s book, The Gulf Oil Spill Story, to children at Gulf Shores Elementary School.
Over the past several years I have focused on tapping into creative energy through my writing and photography with the intention of promoting planetary stewardship. Additionally I have volunteered extensively for Share the Beach, Baldwin County Extension Service Master Environmental Educator program, Wolf Bay Watershed Watch Board, and my own environmental education programs presented to schools, libraries, scout groups, bookstores and other places. These have been some of the most rewarding years of my life with the intention of giving from my heart with the hope generating love and compassion for our beautiful planet and all life here.
Photo by Gulf Adventure Center Photography Staff
This is all wonderful and soul-enriching work and yet….there are still expenses associated with living in our society. But how does a nature-lover, compassion-promoting, environmental gal like me find a place in the working world? I’m at a point in my life where finding meaning in the work I do is an absolute must. And I think I might have discovered a really good fit.
Working as park naturalist, circa 1985. Preparing for a hay ride for campers.
Gulf Adventure Center in Gulf State Park is in my old stomping grounds. As an outdoor recreation administrator and resource manager fresh out from college, I worked in Gulf State Park as the naturalist. In fact, I worked summers during high school and college there and walked into the naturalist position. It was the first professional leap into environmental education.
Photograph by Gulf Adventure Center photography staff.
When an opportunity to work as a zip line guide came to me, I felt I had to give it a try. It was the ideal location, coming full-circle to my roots as an environmental educator, it was active and adventurous, and it presented an opportunity to empower people. The training provided me with an opportunity to get a feel for the job and now that I’m working as a guide, it is proving to fulfill my desire to do something that has meaning.
Photograph by Gulf Adventure Center photography staff
Yesterday a wonderful family went on a trip with another guide and me. I witnessed and assisted as the mom worked through a bit of fear to a point where she was comfortable and having fun zipping from tower to tower. Being outdoors, celebrating sunshine and family, the beautiful views of the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Shelby, dolphins leaping and playing made for a perfect trip.
Helping people have fun outdoors and get physically active is awesome! It’s hard work, it doesn’t pay six figures, but every day I am there, I have an opportunity to make a positive difference in people’s lives and promote environmental education and stewardship in a fun way.
In the short time I’ve been there I’ve zipped the course in pouring rain, wind, sunshine and every time it has been great. I hope to see some of you there and if not there at some other place outdoors. We’ll celebrate the beauty of our planet together!
Tonight I spoke to my local community’s cub scout group. We gathered at the St. Paul’s Episcopal Chapel in Magnolia Springs and I shared a video presentation I produced on endangered species of the Alabama coast…specifically sea turtles and manatees.
The boys and parent/leaders were attentive and asked questions and showed a genuine and engaged interest in the message I brought them. It always makes my heart sing to participate in these programs. But it was the closing of their meeting that deeply touched me.
One of the boys was asked to close with reverence and he offered a prayer. First, he expressed gratitude for the sea turtles and manatees and other animals. Then he spoke of gratitude for our beautiful world. He was thankful for me being able to come and share with them. And finally…well, admittedly I was so deeply touched by his prayerful expression of love and gratitude for nature and our planet and animals that I lost the last bit of what he was saying.
Volunteering doesn’t offer financial rewards but having the opportunity to share video footage, still photographs and personal stories of encounters with sea turtles and manatees with children eager to learn and willing to engage with awe of our planet gives me hope. Honestly there are days when I read the news and see the horrible ways humans treat each other, animals, land, plants, the ocean and other water and I feel despair. But this night, I came away with profound hope and that is pure gold to me.
On days when we experience sadness, grief, despair and even anger over what’s happening to our beloved planet and all life here, I think the best way to balance those feelings is to pass along our love for the planet to those willing to listen…and especially to children, our hope.
As I was driving through Bankhead Tunnel the line of vehicles came to a stop. It was a short delay while traffic was routed around a maintenance crew. Just long enough for me to take a quick photograph. I thought, lucky this wasn’t one of those trips through the tunnel when Lance and I were kids. Way back then we would try to hold our breath through to the other side. Before the Wallace Tunnel…that four-laned wonder with the suicide sharp turn…was constructed. Good memories of Mobile, Alabama from decades past.
Mardi Gras beads were draped like Spanish moss on the ancient branches of live oaks that line Government Street. Metal barricades stood just off the pavement, awaiting their next parade. Purple, gold and green decorations hung from doors, columns, signs, windows…it felt like Mardi Gras.
I associate Mobile and Mardi Gras with childhood and the Deep South…with home. Lights, music and parades…horses. Beads!! Candy!! Childhood memories float upward through many years of experiences and I find tidbits and snapshots in my mind of my dad, mom, brother and me. Maybe we didn’t go that much but from my memories, it was a happy, joyous and exciting time to be a kid on the Gulf Coast.
Today I visited Toomey’s… supplier of all things Mardi Gras in our area. A huge room filled with rows and rows of beads and moon pies gives those of us shopping for throws many choices. But so does the other monstrous room filled with speciality beads and plush toys, frisbees, hats, lighted gadgets…oh my gosh! I enjoy this once-a-year trip!! Every time I enter the store I feel myself light up. I want to visit every corner to take it all in.
It’s still fun to attend parades and catch beads and moon pies but admittedly I find a kid or two nearby and give away most of what I catch. And now, my second year riding, I find even more joy at sharing the much-desired beads…and delicious moon pies and trinkets. It’s a highlight of the year for me. And the proverbial icing on the cake is that the float I ride supports our Alabama sea turtles. No fancy costumes but good Gulf Shores Mardi Gras fun!
Mardi Gras is one of the experiences of my life that is deeply interwoven with the sense of place I have here on the Gulf Coast. It’s not drunken partying that delights me but rather the reliving of happy memories and creating new ones. It’s a time of plenty, of giving and receiving, of celebrating life with everyone. Of music, culture, food, colors, people….home.
The coming of this down-time is perfect after a potent week. Now comes the time for assessing the next step and cultivating a plan. So thank you rain. While I don’t intend to build an ark, there are others radical ideas brewing.
