When I get out of my car, I walk up the rise of the arroyo
edging our part of the Connecticut River, and peer over the top of that expanse
as it flows by, that magnificent lasting phenomena of nature, it reminds me of when I was a kid.
Arriving, all of us in the crowded station wagon, at the beach. Spilling out of the car. Filling my arms with baskets and tubes and babies and reaching
for the small sweet hands of toddlers. And slowly making our determined way
through the hot, deep sand, up the dune, to the very top, where we would catch
that first awe inspiring view of a mysterious, unpredictable, broad ocean.
When I got a little older, I learned what the earth looks
like ; learned that all the earth’s oceans and rivers connect…touch each other.
And long before I heard about molecules and chemical reactions and the way that
bacteria encounter antibiotics, sharing the information at an incredible speed
with millions of their kind, a reaction rippling with ease through your body to ensure their own immunity, I felt that connectedness inside of me. Happening.
I had the sense that
when my foot touched those frightening, wild, frigid waters, I was somehow
connected with every bit of earth’s waters, every surface that touched a shore,
the world over.
I would stand there, numb and blue footed, watching the thick salted
New England waves ,wading in its painful rocky shallows, by its unrepentant undertow, and just feel that connection move right through my
being.
Like all of us, I never thought of speaking of it. I never
wondered what it was that was happening. Because in childhood, often, there are
far too many things happening.
But it did teach me to quietly meet, and greet,
and stand, as the ships passed quietly by on the distant horizon, and inside of
me simmered that feeling - of the world over.
