A little over a year has passed since I moved home to the Gulf Coast. There have been no doubts regarding the move. Not one. Within a few minutes drive I can be on the beach, communing with big water….big salt water. My heart expands to meet the horizon. How I love this place!
Join me as I walk along the beach at Gulf State Park. Celebrate the beauty of our planet, the life force that infuses everything. We are observers, witnesses to this grandeur.
Aren’t we lucky? Don’t you feel blessed to commune with nature!
“Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide? And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech? Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted. Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.” Kahlil Gabran
From a place of deep relaxation a vision emerged. I was in a vast Ocean, deep indigo in color and filled with beautiful creatures. A huge humpback whale echo-located me and swam very close. Harpoons with explosives sought him and massive nets and I urged him to swim away and escape. The ship came closer and closer and as his mate I urged him to dive deep. He constantly put himself in harm’s way to help others. In a frenzy, I swam trying to push his massive body down, deep into the blue depths. He sang to me and in pictures I saw his body taken into the ship that hunted him and watched as it took him apart, piece by piece. The thought came….people will pick his bones clean until there is nothing left.
And with one last surge of energy, I rammed him as the ship hit me. He was free but I was broken.
My whale body sank into the Void yet my consciousness remained. In that moment I knew that the essence of who I am lived on. It was love that drew me to him and love that kept me there. It was love that blocked the ship and kept it from breaking him.
I heard whale song and ocean sounds and felt total peace. Complete peace. As I opened myself to love, all fear disappeared.
And I knew that love is everything, in everything and available in endless supply. And because of this, I have everything I need. This is an abundant world of love.
My gigantic whale heart could hold love in unimaginable quantities and be a channel for it….for life force that is, in essence, love. What keeps us from swimming in this endless supply of love with conscious awareness? Are we so afraid of losing our ‘self’ or ego that we hold back and refuse to let the fires of love consume us, transform us?
I drifted back from this place of surrender, this place of unlimited abundant love, into my human form. With much to ponder I spent time in silence, listening and writing.
Love is like an ocean of vast immensity and we are like fish swimming in this limitless ocean begging for water. We forget we already have love and therefore, everything we will ever need.
As I breathe in, I breathe in love. It is the fabric of this physical world. The life force that holds it all together.
Nobody can withhold love from me because to receive love is as simple as inhaling. Nobody is gatekeeper for love coming to me except me.
Our minds create separation from Source…God…Great Spirit. Our thoughts create this feeling of aloneness. How could we ever be alone or separate from the Universe, from God, when we are surrounded by It? Are a part of It?
“Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.” I Corinthians 7.
My daughter Emily in the Caribbean waters of Bonaire
“Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls….when love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep…For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you….Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself. He threshes you to make you naked. He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant; And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast. All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart……Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love….But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully.” Kahlil Gibran
This passage from The Prophet narrates the journey the soul takes in an effort to find love…looking for it in others, in things, in titles, letting ego define it. Ultimately, finding love requires sacrifice of the ego, a laying down of limits and limitations. And the realization that it is what created us, sustains us and breathes through us.
Photo by Ed Jackson of me and my buddy in a cave, Akumal, Mexico
Love is as close as the air we breathe, as we open to receive. We live in an ocean of love.
I left my home early this morning on my way to Fort Morgan Ferry via a stop-over at a beach between here and there to check for Least Tern courtship and nesting behavior for NFWS. My ultimate destination was the Dauphin Island Sea Lab Discovery Day. I was volunteering at the Marine Mammal Stranding Network table and display.
I did indeed see the endangered species of Least Terns frolicking over the Gulf and having seen at least 30 of those beautiful birds, I drove on to Ft. Morgan.
Waiting in line as a pedestrian at the ferry dock I met a couple from Quebec cycling to Austin, Texas and then on to Europe. I suddenly had an urge to do something crazy like they were doing. They had sold everything and were living and traveling via recumbent cycles pulling small trailers. Reminded me of the guy who sold everything to follow his dream of creating life-size prints of whales. These folks are doing something BIG! And I like it!!!
Meanwhile, I rode the ferry as a pedestrian and made the short walk to the Sea Lab. It was awesome seeing so many families out enjoying the day and learning more about our coastal treasures.
After helping store our display, I walked through the Estuarium and sat for a while with a nurse shark and hopefully somehow communicated my appreciation to him and his cousins all over the globe. That quiet moment sitting nose-to-nose with this beautiful little shark was precious. Then it got crowded so I moved on and walked back to the ferry dock and waited over an hour for the next ferry.
During this time I met an amazing young man who is a first grader. He and his grandmothers had walked on the ferry and visited the Sea Lab’s Discovery Day. We chatted and then, when the ferry arrived, boarded together. The young man and I visited more as we made the trip across Mobile Bay. He expressed his dislike of drilling for gas and oil in the bay and Gulf. He told me of his love for ‘mother nature.’
Just when I felt as if humans had reached the bottom of environmental and social concern, I met this amazing young man who is a volunteer for Share the Beach…Alabama’s sea turtle volunteer program. He without hesitation expresses his love for mother nature and is clear about his distaste and concern over drilling for oil and gas in the water.
On this three year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster–when I stopped counting gas rigs in the bay at over 30 in the crossing from Ft. Morgan to Dauphin Island–and when my hope for humanity had reached a new low, this boy reminded me of the generations that are rising up to lead us. Suddenly I didn’t feel hopeless any more.
I was beginning to think it was a bad April Fool’s joke. I was standing on the beach asking the lifeguard if he knew where the dead dolphin was that had been reported. He didn’t but rode west three miles down the beach on his three wheeler looking….nothing. I called our stranding coordinator and told her the lifeguard reported that someone said there had been a dolphin with rope on its tail…but no dead dolphin materialized. Not sounding good….could we be getting pranked by spring breakers?
A little nudge from my intuition sent me walking east. It was looking pretty hopeless but my intuition nudged me again…ask the fisherman. I did and he said…”Yes, I know exactly where it is. Can’t you smell it?”
Recovered dolphin last week
Great. And I thought last week’s dolphin carcass was challenging. The bloating was significant and so was the smell. But I was observing a necropsy of a very large, adult male dolphin inside a facility. Some decomposing and a lot of blood…the smell of blood was what wore on my stamina. Tissue samples were taken, counting of teeth, and all the other data that must be collected from a marine mammal death. Hours upon hours of locating, loading, hauling, photographing, and bit-by-bit taking the dolphin apart and taking samples from organs, blood, eyes…a very intensive effort on the part of several people.
Thankfully it wasn’t an uncounted dead dolphin
But today, I witnessed another large dolphin…this time in the final stages of decay. The body had been dragged with a rope and there were parts missing….the lower right mandible, the dorsal fin…and even in the ragged state this dolphin was in, I could see where tissue had been removed. Between our coordinator, my on-scene eyes (and nose…significant putrid smell) and another biologist via telephone, we pieced together the story.
This dolphin was found in December, processed by the other biologist and dragged up in the dunes by the resort gardener and buried. It had been recently unearthed by someone or something and the smell created a curiosity in spring break celebrants who reported to the resort management there was a dolphin on the beach with a rope around it. They forgot to mention the fact that it was nearly skeletal….but that’s okay. We want to be sure it is a dolphin that has already been counted….and not an unreported death.
I had nothing to measure the length of the carcass except my flip flops…. x 9 lengths
Perhaps I did feel like an April Fool….but in a good way I suppose. Not another dolphin death, just a resurrection…of sorts….VERY ‘of sorts.’
Every marine mammal that washes onshore (bays and rivers included…not just the Gulf) and is reported has to be confirmed, measured, tissue samples taken and a lot of paperwork completed by the coordinator at Dauphin Island Sea Lab. She is working to build the volunteer program so our state can do its part in reporting dolphin and manatee mortality and stranding.
It’s not a pleasant job as most ‘strandings’ are really recovery and examination of dead dolphins and manatees. But it is very necessary to gather the data and samples so the reason behind the nearly 900 dolphin deaths since the BP Oil Spill can be determined. Everyone isn’t capable of this kind of ‘death’ work…but there are different jobs you can do to help the Alabama Marine Mammal Stranding Network. It’s one way you can make a difference.
Beautiful ocean water off the coast of Bonaire, N.A.
Roaring Fork waterfall near Mt. Mitchell in North CarolinaAbout to submerge into ocean at Bonaire, N.A.Triple Falls in North CarolinaAnother view of Roaring Fork Falls in North CarolinaMay our beautiful water planet be blessed. May we be good stewards of our water resources.
A little over a year has passed since I moved home to the Gulf Coast. There have been no doubts regarding the move. Not one. Within a few minutes drive I can be on the beach, communing with big water….big salt water. My heart expands to meet the horizon. How I love this place!
Join me as I walk along the beach at Gulf State Park. Celebrate the beauty of our planet, the life force that infuses everything. We are observers, witnesses to this grandeur.
