The tide is ebbing, and there is an hour until sunset. A fresh wind has quickened, high clouds are being pushed towards from the west, and a misting marine layer is blowing by from north to south. With one layer of clouds rushing across the sky in one direction and another layer rolling in beneath the first layer, the sky is confused and chaotic. All of the movement causes me to look one way first but then another way in the next instant.
Yesterday, high mare’s tail cirrus clouds were drawn across a cerulean blue sky. The sun felt warm, and the breeze was comfortable on my face. This afternoon, the mare’s tails thickened and lowered into a mackerel sky of cirrocumulus clouds. The signs are there. Stormy weather is coming within a few hours. If we were at sea in a wooden boat with sails, I would be preparing for heavy seas to go and seek the leeward side of some protective structure.
I wonder for a moment how I can read the weather on the ocean when I have lived most of my life far from it. My forebears moved inland three or more centuries ago, so my ability to see and feel what is coming must be hardwired into my genetic code by ancestors from far back in place and time.
Flat seas in the morning have given way to a rising surf pushing hard against the outflowing tide, pushing up breakers growing from 3 feet to 4 and then 5 feet. The crash of the surf is all I can hear now except for the screeching of the closest gulls and the hoarse barking of the crows. The roaring of the sea and the enveloping winds have completely engulfed me. I am here in a way that I am always here, not just in my imagination but in reality.
The sun has disappeared behind the clouds, smudging the horizon, and there will be no colors at sunset tonight. I was momentarily disappointed because we had come to this place to watch the sun set into the sea. We need to catch the point sometimes. The sun does not set. It remains in the same place relative to the earth. The earth spins away from the sun in the evening and toward the sun in the morning.
The sun suddenly shines through the clouds, and even though the sun remains obscured, a brilliant path bathed in sunlight stretches from the horizon to the beach. An invitation is offered, and I cannot resist. My feet remain planted in the sand and comfortably seated on a massive log, but I still travel out toward the horizon. Something from deep inside me responds to the call, and I find myself flying out over the water, so low to the wave tops that I can feel the salt spray on my face. I am accompanied by a string of geese flying alongside and behind me. Gulls circle over me. I see the beaks opening and closing, but I can hear nothing from the rush of the wind.
I continue to fly toward the horizon that never seems to come closer. Darkness falls but not into blackness but into deep purple and rose color. I can see nothing, but when I glance over my shoulder, I can see a line of yellow and orange brightening on the horizon, and color soon returns to the sky. It is not the bright sunlight of days but the ethereal soft light of dreams. I find myself flying back through time, revisiting other days on this ocean. I see us walking on this and other beaches in Washington and California. The journey continues to Hawaii and up to Alaska. I blink and look down, and I find I am over the northern Atlantic, and then the green of Ireland appears below me. I find myself drifting lower and lower in the sky until I see Skellig Michael, the Cliffs of Mohr and the sands of the beaches of Fanore. I long to land to walk the Irish shore again, but I pulled farther into the dream and when I blink again, find myself flying along the shores of the American Atlantic coast from Maine down to New York and then to Florida, the Gulf Coast and around to the shores of Costa Rica.
Darkness comes again but this time suddenly and without notice. I am no longer on or of the earth of today but I have been swallowed by the mystery of time. I see faded vignettes of tall ships with sails approaching the shores of Massachusetts and others the safe harbors of Virginian. Somehow, I become aware my ancestors are on those ships, and they are just arriving in the New World. Darkness falls again and then it brightens once more. Now I see the ships leaving ports in England and Ireland. Belfast, Liverpool and South Hampton appear and disappear again. The experiences I sense are not my own but rather have been inherited from those whose DNA makes me a unique human person.
Darkness comes again one more time and I sense I am flying through time again, further and further into the past. The sea level rises and falls until there is only water everywhere before me. Nothing but water that wells up and settles down like waves rolling into a massive bay. The awareness of where I am hits like thunder from nearby lightening. I am in the first day, the day when the Word spoke the universes into existence. I feel a need to settle down, to just rest and experience the nothingness of the moment. Those who do not believe would stop at this point and vainly believe all has been revealed and there is nothing more to experience. I believe, I know there is more and it is not enough to rest in creation, the Creator calls the created to rest only in Him, the creator we call father. I close my eyes. Now I rest but only for a blessed, wonderful moment. The journey for me continues but I go now with more clarity. Creation does not lead to its self only, it draws us to the creator through pure, complete and unfathomable love.
