Beyond the Tidepools

As soon as I arrive at the beach house in Pacific Grove, I tuck my suitcase inside the front door and find the path to the beach.

During rainy season, the path is muddy, but today dust kicks up around my shoes and melts into the ocean breeze wafting up from the beach.  Tufts of grass poke out of the dirt like uncombed hair, and around a tiny pink house, birds perch on the rails of a wooden fence.  The sun is not yet up, but it’s light enough for me to see a doe lying in the dry grass beside a single sun flower.

In only five minutes, I reach the beach, cross the two lane highway, and climb onto the sandy trail that follows the dark coastline.

In the crags of the beach, I find a few tide pools bathing in foam, partially hidden by necklaces of seaweed, and I squat down to inspect them.  The seaweed smells like fish, a stench so powerful that my nostrils flare in defense.

I trace a figure eight on the surface of one tide pool and suddenly notice a starfish stranded on the pond’s bank, drying out like beef jerky in the sun.  Red scales scar its parched skin like bloody tattoos.  Blistering white pockmarks cover its body and legs. Its tentacles jerk slightly as it hopelessly reaches for the tide pool’s wetness.  It dies.

A sadness pummels me like grief and I shriek soundlessly, bending my head into my knees, blacking out the sand, the ocean, and the tide pool.  I mourn.

A crack startles me out of my imposed darkness.  I look up so fast that I see only dots in front of my eyes for a few seconds, searching.

On a rock, about four feet away, a stout seagull grips a crab in its beak, and knocks it on a rock.  Crack, crack.  The crab’s shell fractures, splits, and splinters.  A few legs fly off and land in the sand, still squirming.

Crack, crack.  The seagull slaps the crab onto a flat piece of rock and jabs its beak into the body.  It pulls bits of white flesh out from under the crushed shell, shifts it down its throat, and swallows.  Motionless, I watch the murder over and over again until the crustacean stops quivering and lies broken, mashed, and still.

My chest tightens.  I inhale and hold.

My beach is fear and death.  Hopelessness.  Nothing is forever; life is worthless since everyone dies anyway.  Bad people hurt good people, and I can’t do anything about it.  I lie my head back down on my knees and let my tears run down my bare legs like rivers of pain.  Great sobs echo in the darkness, and I fold my arms over my head to protect myself from the dangerous pictures in my mind.

A long time passes.  Finally, the sea’s music wipes my tears.

A whiff of breeze sails through a window between my knees and kisses my face.  I look up—across the dark sand, over the crawling shore, beyond the undulating navy cobalt marine to the horizon. 

Whales. The backs of dozens and dozens of gray whales.  They cavort and blur the horizon, ruffle the surface of the sea, blowing spouts of steam.

The sea billows like a blanket in the wind; in its creases, lines of white bubbles flirt with the shore, ever closer, ever bigger, until the bubbles splash onto the sand like happy cartoon characters, and pop!

Rocks, as massive as houses, glisten in the dawn, black and craggy.  There, sea lions lie and roll over like lazy teenagers out of school.  They yelp for food.  Herons float over the lions like white fans, circling, gliding, dipping.  Their pleated wings wave.

As the sleepy sun rises like a yellow pearl in the morning sky, I fill up with a new essence–beach, ocean, wideness, greatness.  I change my position and sit Buddha-legged on the dark sand and become what I see. The whales salute me with their blows.   I am one of them, swimming and diving in a wet heaven.  The waves roll toward me like wide smiles, and the sand sticks to my feet like stars.

The swell of the water fills me with hope.  I search the line of the crooked horizon and find peace.