In the Ebb
Today the wind drove the water out instead of in. Coupled with the moon tide, the shores were peeled back by nature’s whims. Exposed in their beds, the sea grasses were pungent. In direct sun they were emerald green fading to black at the edges. Against a brown undulating silt, the blown out river was fringed with a temporary marshland. Gulls and other birds clumped along the shoreline, pulling on small shells and snails, perhaps on the rare seahorse that lives in those shallows.
The rivers here fluctuate regularly and sometimes radically. The ocean’s tides influence the estuaries, the living pipelines that link ocean to brackish waters. Bays and inlets give way to ocean along a series of banks and edges. Sometimes these living waterways are easy to take for granted, but on days like this one where the bottom of a river is exposed to the glare of the sun and the whip of the air, constancy comes into question.
I realize more and more that we don’t seek mere consistency in our lives, but a kind of stasis. We yearn not to grow old, we seek not to change. We abide by all sorts of odd realities so we can imagine that life is constant and that we will remain the same. We do this as individuals and we often do it as groups.
These days of ferocious weather are good for me because they remind me that nothing is constant in this way that I might prefer. Even the familiar threat of flooding could just as well turn into its opposite, one of waters receding into less familiar ebbs. It’s good to realize that everything can change at a moment’s notice, and to see what’s exposed in those flashes.
Our culture is vested in expectation instead of agility. Our expectations ride simple lines of left and right and up and down. We see have and have-not but see little of what balance means and implies. We build to address a problem, or problems, not to facilitate a state of exchange. To become more resilient we must think with the unexpected ebb in mind, not to protect us from change, but to allow us to entertain it without fear and with a fuller sense of appreciation. To get beyond binary oppositions we have to become comfortable with an ever-changing world that is well beyond expectations. We must expect the unexpected and learn to see deeply and quickly into all the edges exposing themselves in the ebb. This is a key to our regeneration as a species. At least that’s what I was thinking as I walked the dog, and watched those gulls and thought of that sea horse I know.
