Journeys
I remember walking with my partner on that ribbon of sand some ten years ago.
Sleeping in our campsite among the dunes the night before, we could hear the bass and baritone thunder rolls softly dueling offshore. That cool, clean air of a post-storm morning was the resulting reward, and we heaved our feet through the damp sand — lightly caked atop from the rain and morning dew, unlike the hot, fine sand of the mid-afternoon — and we started our walk along the sea.
When walking on a beach, you are teased with the riddle of the journey. You have to pick a direction to start— left or right — a deceptively simple fifty-fifty choice. But then the real trick begins, for a good beach is infinite: long and forever, unbounded by inlets or jetties natural or human-made, unfenced by property lines, trespassing signs, and other gross reminders of capitalistic constructs. You could walk, and walk, and walk forever, until another sunset sinks. But who does that? We inevitably succumb to the riddle: when do we turn back? When do we return to whence we came? Is this a defeat, that we can’t walk any further? Or that we’ve chained ourselves to the whims of some schedule? Or worse, we have to get back because it was time to go home. Time to leave the sea.
I can’t recall what reflected in our minds that morning, but I remember choosing to turn right, and that we didn’t have a schedule. That we walked closely, sharing our warmth. She probably had one of her indispensable pagnes on her, one wrapped around her hips and maybe another refashioned as a shawl over her shoulders.
I do recall pausing frequently and excitedly at the other gifts offered by a post-storm beach: the stranded shells, seaweeds, and other recently living beings. Washed up, as the English language expression goes — but the reality is more noble, in my opinion. You can’t fight a storm churning your very element: the sea carries you and can batter you as well. There is no option for cooperation or altruism when you are a lone, pulsing, beating creature trying to survive this maelstrom of nature. There is no political inequity to reform nor social service cushion to rely on. Should the currents rip you from your roots or mortally bash you against a sharp reef-head, you are done. And though you now sit prone and desiccating in the above-world of air and wind — you should be admired with honor. For you did your best, with what qualities you were given.
I particularly remember one of these honored guests from that morning walk long ago. It was a small, young shark. A lemon shark. It rested still on the beach, speckled with sand, eyes determinedly staring into the afterlife. Then and now I think about this creature, a valiant contestant of our mortal plane. It, too, journeyed along these long, barrier-island shores — perhaps having just left the safety of quieter bay waters for the first time. Like us humans, it started its journey from a placental womb, fed through an umbilical cord for nearly a year, then born live into the sea. But this young soul did not and would not have the privilege of perpetuating its species, for lemon sharks needed 13 to 15 years to reach reproductive maturity, even returning to their old nursery grounds to give birth.
But it did its best. Forward and onward, into the riddle.
