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.
Inner Music
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.
Song of 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.
