Water Planet
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.
Hope
Manatees slept along the bottom as I floated quietly among cypress roots. Fog hugged the surface as rays of light peeked between dark tree trunks. I waited.
Eventually a large, very pregnant cow glanced my way. Slowly….slowly….ever so slowly….she swam toward me. I remained motionless except for the finger on my left hand that began the video and my right index finger that pulled the lever on my underwater camera housing.
I stayed in the stillness of my heart while sending as much love as I could to her. She had survived at least one encounter with a boat propeller and had lived long enough to reproduce. She gave me hope for this sacred species.
Peaceful Morning with the Manatees
Today’s encounter with manatees was nearly silent. There were few people and those present were quiet and respectful. For nearly two hours I floated on the surface, watching manatees sleep on the bottom. Occasionally, one by one, they would surface, breathe and slowly sink back to slumber.
To get a good photo or video the interaction can be the sought-for experience; but today I found pleasure in observing respectful humans take care around the sleeping manatees…and this made my heart happy.
The scars nearly every animal carries from propellers…even the babies…remind me how fragile the balance between humans and manatees.
In the quiet of the springs, surrounded by dreaming manatees I too dreamed of a global awakening to care, to love and respect all life. There are no stories of boisterous, curious, cuddly babies this night. Just the story of how humans and wildlife can interact peacefully, respectfully if humans grow into the peaceful, compassionate beings I know we can be.
Alive in the World
White line spun off the reel as I frog kicked through the water-filled tunnel. Out of the green light of the cavern zone through limestone walled wetness, around a sharp right turn and then a sharp left turn at the well-known STOP sign and onto the gold line. The magical gold line that cave divers know as the main line in cave systems here in Florida.
Once tied in we had a continuous line out of the cave in the event of light failure. So my dive buddy Pam and I gently and with care to the cave, made our way into the inky blackness. Illuminated by our bright cave lights we enjoyed the beautiful geological formations. Swiss-cheese-like here and solid with wavy lines in other places. Layers of brown silt hung on the nearly vertical walls like cinnamon dusting a scrumptious delicacy. And in truth, these caves are delicacies and must be treated as such.
After being out of cave diving for a few years I took a side mount class several weeks ago. It’s easier carrying one heavy steel tank to the water at a time that two at once. My back has thanked me. And just this past weekend I have found my cave mojo once again and it’s a great feeling. I’ve had some great friends in the past who supported my training and skill development and this weekend I found out I still have great cave diving friends although there are new faces.
Two days ago I felt it kick in but today that cave mojo surged through me and I felt myself move past where I had been three years ago to a different place within myself about diving caves. Not in a reckless way but with a deeper respect for my own strengths and acknowledgment that I absolutely love being in an underwater cave and seeing the beauty of the Earth and her lifeblood as it courses through underground aquifers.
This evening finds me in sunset bliss awaiting two mornings of manatee encounters. After a delightful dinner of Thai curry vegetables that was orgasmic…I’m NOT kidding….(Thai Phoon has amazing, amazing food)…I walked out on the dock at King’s Bay and listened to little coots as they swam in their duck-posse making their wonderful little coot song. The orange of the sunset reflecting on the water was interrupted with mullet splashing and the last pelicans of the day finding a roost. It took me to a place of pure bliss. A place of openness and wonder and awe.
It wasn’t just the cave diving this weekend or delicious nourishment or the sunset that has my entire being humming, it is everything lovely and wonderful that has come about over the past few days that makes me feel so alive in the world. And so incredibly grateful.
Note: Anyone interested in cave diving or cavern diving should GET PROPER TRAINING! I am an open water instructor but I still needed extensive training to become a cave diver. People who do not get appropriate training and dive into caves put their lives at risk. If you follow the rules things can still go wrong but your training is what can help you make it out alive!