Water Planet
Things I Don’t Understand
Looking at the dwindling health of the planet has me scratching my head in confusion. During my sea turtle volunteer work, in the colorful dawn hour, questions come to me as I pick up trash left behind or washed up. I’ve compiled a short list of things I don’t understand. Perhaps you have some you can add.
1. People who depend on the Gulf of Mexico as a resource for their livelihood in the way of commercial seafood fisheries and use the Gulf as a dump. Last week I found all manner of debris washed up….yellow bags of salty brine, thick gloves, bailers, large floating buoys. Why would the people depending on the water dump their wastes into the sea?
2. Parents who sit on the beach with their kids and leave cigarette butts, beer bottles, metal caps and trash on the beach. What are they teaching their precious children? Cigarette butts are made of the same material as plastic bags…they don’t decompose. Bottles are made of sand…they won’t decompose but may break and cut said children. Metal caps will decompose after rusting and perhaps cutting children. Styrofoam plates, plastic bottles and other trash…takes decades or longer to be ground into smaller pieces that are ingested by sea life which we, in turn, ingest and therefore have toxic chemicals added to our already challenged DNA resulting in genetic changes and ill health.
3. People who toss hundreds of feet of monofilament line overboard. This has the potential to harm countless marine species…think about it. Guesstimates are about 500 years for it to decompose.
4. Why politicos and city hierarchies put money before care of the beaches…the same beaches that attract all of those tourists and tourists dollars. I don’t need to say anything more on this one. I just don’t ‘get it.’
5. Why is the health of the many ecosystems put dead last on most priority lists when it is the complete basis for health and life for humans? I don’t understand why this is so difficult to understand. It’s factual.
So while I’m out there looking for mama sea turtle tracks and picking up garbage that fills bags every time I go, these questions come to mind. I’ve yet to find a real answer and I’m left with many things I don’t understand.
Loving the Earth
Loving the Earth: Creating a Conscious Relationship with Our Planet
A slight breezed carried my SUP board downriver as I stopped paddling to watch a pair of bald eagles drag their talons along the surface of the water. Nearby great egrets crowned cypress trees, their white plumage dazzling against the background of blue sky. A mullet splashed in the mud-tinted water of the Magnolia River and brought my attention back from sky to earth. As my gaze turned downward a brown pelican folded her wings, as if in prayer, and dropped from the sky close to my board. All around life expressed in a beautiful ballet of balance with this lone patron admiring the dance. Bliss seemed shared by all but perhaps it might be better named communion.
One never knows what will be the call that brings us to our heart’s work. While I loved nature since childhood, I never felt the commitment…the calling…to dedicate my life’s work to it until the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. It felt as if everything in life stopped so I could focus entirely on the Gulf Coast and the amazing life in our coastal ecosystems. During the first days of oil washing ashore I remember thinking the end of the world had arrived. How could this happen?
It’s easier to believe everything is okay than to pay attention to what’s really happening. I shared my book containing oil spill images with a cousin the other day that lives in Pensacola and she was shocked to see the reality I documented. There are people who live in Gulf Shores who still believe it wasn’t bad…that there wasn’t oil mixed with dispersant and it wasn’t fizzing in tidal pools of tiny fish gasping to their last breath. I know because I saw it first hand and stood on the beach weeping for every life I saw pass.
The most difficult thing I have ever experienced was witnessing the spill and its effects on innocent life which included small children playing in oily waters…so polluted that the benzene burned my eyes and throat. Video and photographs in my library document everything I saw but they can never share the true experience of grief beyond anything I’ve known.
A friend and mentor reminded me, during the first year of the spill, that there was a reason I was being called to witness the horror even though I might not understand why. Over four years have passed and I am more convinced that the only way to heal our broken planet is to heal our relationship with It and to heal our relationship with each other. That means healing our own lives.
The only solution I have found is to practice love…love as compassion…love as respect…love in the purest form of opening to surrender, to service.
Love for the planet requires opening the self. When we risk the deep opening of human heart to planetary heart we know the elation of unspeakable joy, of the heart’s expanding in answer to beauty. We also know the experience of grief and heartbreak when places, wildlife and humans we love are destroyed or profoundly injured.
Celebrating the beauty of the Magnolia River and other places of natural beauty relieves the grief that comes from being aware of the trials our planet is experiencing. There is resilience in nature and my hope is we will practice better stewardship before a non-reversible tipping point is reached.
As I remain engaged with nature’s rhythms through simple, daily observation and intention, I am drawn more deeply into partnership with the Earth. If we collectively open our hearts to loving this sacred planet, we can create a bond with each other that will transform darkness and create positive, lasting change.
Bob Marley Speaks
Dawn. I was walking with my scuba gear to the Ocean. As I approached the entry, an osprey cried and I glanced up. Just above the dive benches was the magnificent fish hawk perched in a tree. He flew out over the water as I continued walking. I’ve seen them many times but never perched on a tree…over the bench I was about to use. Pretty big smile to carry into the dive.
Nice dive, beautiful fish, easy 54 minutes of gentle kicking and gliding and watching life on the reef begin the day. No other human here, just the Ocean and this mermaid-woman hybrid. And today I went further, to an area where elk horn coral ‘trees’ are being used to grow this coral species. I felt resounding H O P E throughout my being. There are people that care, that are taking action to help. Another smile with my entire being.
During the time underwater I thought of a former dive buddy and smiled at the saltwater happiness we experienced in years past. My heart and mind sent him gratitude and love, that energy that never dies or changes…only grows and deepens as compassion grows within us. Heart happy goodness, a smiling heart for this human sea-creature.
After the dive, as I was walking back to the condo…still dripping with sea water and lost in the peaceful feeling of saltwater baptism…I saw two bright yellow birds wearing bright, orange caps. The saffron finches watched me walk up to the sidewalk where they were perched and so I stopped and greeted them. They stared at me in my state of saltwater sogginess and gave me a message as we connected for several moments.
At the time I didn’t really know what it was they were telling me, but a few minutes later I got it. Even though Bob Marley sang of three little birds, that’s the song that came to mind and reminded me of the sweetness of life…in this moment…in the present. Now.
“Don’t worry about a thing, ‘Cause every little thing gonna be alright. Singin’: Don’t worry about a thing, ‘Cause every little thing gonna be alright. Rise up this morning, smile with the risin’ sun, ‘two’ little birds, Each by my doorstep singing’ sweet songs, of melodies pure and true saying’ this is my message to you…don’t worry about a thing. ‘Cause every little thing gonna be alright.”
There is hope within this mermaid woman today….for all life, for every living thing. So today, as I welcomed the day in my saltwater way, I smiled with the risin’ sun and it has been shining all day long within me.
Note: Many of you have asked me about the solo scuba diving I do. I wanted to write a tiny bit about that…first, I am an instructor and whenever I’m with students, especially new students, I’m basically solo diving with the added responsibility of whoever is with me. Secondly, I am certified as a self-reliant/solo diver. Third, as a sidemount certified cave diver I am basically solo diving in the cave (with other people present of course) because of the way my gas supply is configured. And lastly, I have hundreds of dives and use my cave diving ‘rules’ when solo diving…I turn the dive when I reach thirds so I have two-thirds of my gas supply to return on, etc. And I always dive shallow enough to do a controlled emergency swimming ascent to the surface if necessary. I do NOT condone solo diving and always, always encourage divers to keep in practice and get instruction for new kinds of dives. A solo diver must be well-equipped in underwater navigation skills and self-rescue skills….etc. So please do NOT go off on your own as a scuba diver unless you have extensive dive experience and proper training.
Golden Crown of French Grunts
I hung motionless in the turquoise water, silently witnessing a living, golden crown adorning a beautiful growth of elk horn coral in the white sand bottom. That’s how the Sea is….alive, moving, breathing as one with all Her creatures. The French grunts with their golden stripes schooled and moved as one being, swaying with the surge of the water column. I too moved only as the water moved me, hanging so peaceful in saltwater reverie.
That’s why I dive…Oneness. It’s never about how far I go or how long I stay underwater but only about the experience of being part of the underwater world, a witness to the immense capacity for life found in the Ocean.
I awoke to the sweet sounds of a warbler perched in the palm tree outside my window. In the dark, pre-dawn quietness–while most of the place is still sleeping–trills and warbles pierced the silence and brought me from the dreamtime. In that land between sleep and waking, the palm leaves rustled their staccato swishing and began the song of the dawn.
A faint glow called to the artist in me so I unpacked my camera, grabbed my tripod and headed to the water. As I stepped outside it felt like I was un-peeling another layer of civilization and properness and expectations from myself and entering into the elemental world of Bonaire that my soul answers to with opening…unfolding…deep breaths….unbounded gratitude.
Standing in soft, cool sand, sound again spoke to me in the tinkling of coral bits in the gentle surf, the wind gently whistling and tossing my hair, water swooshing and moving itself up to my feet. Music of the dawn, calling me to connect with elemental spirits of air, water, fire and earth. There is no other place that calls so strongly to my soul.
Later….a frog fish, master of camouflage presented himself to me. A large peacock flounder, another being perfectly capable of rending herself hidden on the reef, lay quietly waiting. A tiny, precious little moray eel, yellow and black and no longer than a few inches, caused rapturous joy to erupt from within. This life….this immense Ocean of life…is the lifeblood of Earth and I, a daughter of the sea, felt my heart singing hymns of worship.
Later still….I knelt at the clear, warm water’s edge seeking bits of sea glass. But really, truly I simply wanted to connect with the silence within myself as the saltwater caressed me, nurtured me and reminded me of fins and scales, and seaweed hair that are features that define me…mermaid….daughter of Poseidon…lover of the Sea.
Around my flowing, seaweed hair swims a crown of fish as I swim beside a grandmother sea turtle. There is no separation. There is only Oneness.