ocean

World Wildlife Day 2019: #DoOneThingToday for #LifeBelowWater

This year, for the first time ever, World Wildlife Day is turning the spotlight on “Life Below Water.”

You know already that I’m a nature girl. Whether I’m posting photos of hummingbirds  or harbor seals, I love sharing with you the treasures that come into view when I slow my roll and zoom the camera a little closer.  No surprise, then, I’m happy to promote this landmark occasion. Such a wonderful opportunity to celebrate biodiversity with the global community!

Is it possible to transform this one-day fete into something even more powerful and sustainable? I think so. We can support ocean-friendly legislation, while also giving license to our own imaginations. As the WWD suggests: “Every person’s small actions add up to a much larger solution – making the difference between a species surviving or disappearing forever. Just #DoOneThingToday to make a difference and help wildlife conservation.”

I invite you, dear readers, to consider your daily lifestyle choices, and the myriad ways they impact marine animals and their habitats. What mindless habits can we change, to affect positive change? Think: self-awareness, not sharp rebukes.  Can we give up plastic straws and bottled water? Bypass single-use packaging and toxic chemicals, in favor of organically grown, locally sourced produce? Join beach cleanup crews and carry away our own garbage? Let’s make a pact to  choose at least one new way of doing things. Each one, teaching one, showing by example our shared commitment. When multiplied by all the participants in #WWD (including you), we can make a whale of a difference!  It’s a gift to ourselves, really, given that we are all interconnected, and very much dependent on a healthy ocean.

Autumn by the Ocean

It’s autumn here, absolutely. But if you’re expecting cool, crisp mornings and chilly nights, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Here in Southern California, autumn is an extension of summer, with longer shadows and shorter days. There are fewer tourists, but it’s still warm enough for picnic lunches by the beach. Here, for example, ants are sipping nectar from a honeysuckle vine, which has twisted itself around the thorny bougainvillea bush that clings to the limestone cliff with an oceanside view.

And this is the bougainvillea around which the honeysuckle wraps its arms.

Our Mediterranean climate is far different from leafy New England, where farm stands are piled high with crunchy apples and colorful foliage forms a thick, kaleidoscope carpet over suburban lawns and forests.  It’s warm here, and sunny, but equally beautiful in its own way.

I love our cozy autumn mornings, when the marine layer blankets the hills and the sunrise sets the tile roofs aglow.

The sun slants lower in the afternoon sky, casting a warm glow over the wildflowers and spotlighting the iridescent hummingbirds that flit through our backyard gardens. And just before nightfall, the sun transforms itself into a shimmering ball that scatters diamonds over the ocean. As Victoria Erickson once said, “If a year was tucked inside of a clock, then autumn would be the magic hour.”

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Courage and compassion, unleashed

Meet my new friend, Chewy–a gorgeous, gregarious Golden Retriever.

I admire his tenacity, holding on to that stick with a singular focus! I’m teaching myself how to photograph animals/birds in motion–not so easy, but he’s a most accommodating subject.

Chewy’s a well-loved, well-trained rescue who carries himself with a confidence that comes of knowing that he’s safe.

But other dogs aren’t as lucky. Sea creatures, either. I re-learned that painful lesson, when I stumbled upon this:

A spiked dog collar at the water’s edge, lodged between wet sand and rock. It had washed out to sea–heavy chain and stabby metal, weaponized further by strong waves and currents. Who knows what damage it could’ve inflicted on our precious marine life and habitats, had the ocean not spit it out again?

The sand is hard-packed, in and around those nasty spikes. With the calm blue ocean as backdrop, maybe it doesn’t look as dangerous as it really is. But take a look at this most recent research, via the Ocean Conservancy.  Or scan this partial list:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080416214912.htm

(Excerpt via Science Daily, linked above.)

I simply can’t imagine any circumstances where a dog owner would use a pronged collar, much less be so absent-minded as to leave it behind. Try as I might, there’s no sugar coating something so reckless, so potentially cruel and harmful. And although my friends whispered other, even uglier possibilities, I can’t bear to think about them, much less repeat them here.

It’s hard to confront things like this, but we must. Each one, teaching one, and encouraging others to do the same. For Chewy and his four-legged friends, for marine wildlife and their ocean habitats, and for our own future on this beautiful planet we call home.

Hidden Treasures, waiting to be found

I don’t actually know what drew my eyes to this heart-shaped rock, wedged into the tiny crawl space between the boardwalk and the sand. Maybe it was the sliver of sunlight that fell across the face of it, at just the right moment. That’s how the ocean sometimes presents to us her most precious treasures, isn’t it? Like the lustrous pearl, for instance–tucked into an unassuming oyster shell, waiting for its intended recipient.

Thankful Thursday: Blueberry Scones and Serendipitous Encounters

Flowers perfumed my neighborhood market, splashes of sunshine on a summer morning.

Tempting…

…but after a long walk on the beach, I had a single purchase in mind.

“One blueberry scone, please,” I said to the woman behind the bakery counter.

She chose the pastry with the plumpest berries, swaddled it with parchment paper before sliding it into a paper bag. Brown eyes twinkling, she presented it to me like a gift.

“Thank you,” I said. Just then, I caught my reflection in the bakery case. My eyes were bright and my cheeks were rosy, but my clothes were rumpled and wet. Hair clung to my scalp in limp curls, tousled by salty breezes and dampened by fog.

“Beach hair,” I said with a shrug.

“Ah, sí!” she said, “I get that, too.”

“Do you go down there on your breaks?”

“No time,” she said, “but my family goes down to Puerto Vallarta in July…”

“Oh! That’s really soon! You must be excited!”

She turned away, wiping invisible crumbs from the counter and blinking hard. “Not this year,” she eventually said. “No money.”

There weren’t any other customers around, and –here’s the real gift–she felt safe in telling me the whole story. Mexico is her birthplace. Her father lives there, still. Her siblings have scattered to the winds, but the family reconvenes in her hometown every year. In beautiful Puerto Vallarta, they shrug off their worries and embrace their cultural traditions. Mañana will take care of itself; for one week every year, they’re able to live together in the moment. 

“But not this year,” she said with a sigh. But then she brightened. “We have great memories though! My daughter is really little, but she remembers…”

I wanted to give her daughter the memories of a life time, but that’s not within my power. “Oh hey, I know!” I scrolled quickly through my cell phone, showed her some recent pictures of Freckles.

She admired his tender brown eyes and giggled at his goofy poses. “¿Dónde?” she asked.

“Not more than five minutes from here!” I said. And then I let her in on my secret. I told her a little bit about Freckles, showed her how to coordinate the tide tables with his haul-out times, and pinpointed his lounging spots on a map.

“Oh, my daughter will love him!”

I nodded. “You, too. We all do.”

She eventually rang up my order, and when she counted back my change, we mirrored each other’s smiles. As new friends do.

****

I slid the scone onto a pretty blue plate–a “happy” for my husband. He smiled, but his forehead was wrinkled with worry. “You’ve got dark smudges under your eyes,” he said. “Go look in the mirror.”

Mascara was sliding down my face, swirled together with saltwater tears. I laughed at my reflection, and I swear, my heart grew three sizes.

Here, another serendipitous encounter–seemingly random, but maybe not.  I don’t claim to understand it, but I am grateful for yet another gift from the sea.

 

Stories in the dark: Musings in the aftermath of senseless violence

I’ve always found a quiet comfort in the 23rd Psalm, memorized  in Vacation Bible School and carried into adulthood like a glowing candle.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…

The imagery is beautiful, at once joyful and serene. To my ears, the King James version is especially lyrical, probably because it’s what I grew up hearing. In troubled times, we look for the light, seek the familiar.

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That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate other translations. In fact, someone recently posted a modernized version to social media:

…He prepares refreshment and renewal in the midst of my activity by anointing my mind with oils of tranquility. My cup of joyous energy overflows…

Written in the mid-1960s by a Japanese woman named Taki Miyashina, it felt to me like an affirmation–as refreshing as sea spray, calming as the ocean’s lullaby.

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I sent it on to a special friend, who responded in a flash: “Very pretty word pictures that sound a little new age-ish to me. For me, it doesn’t fulfill the original meaning.”

Well, that ruffled my feathers, I’ll tell you what!

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I pushed back on what felt to me like a purity test. We made nice, of course, and I’m sorry now that I didn’t respond more graciously in the moment.

And yet…

I don’t think it’s for any one person to say, “This is the only way to write something, now and for all time.” Our ears aren’t always attuned to the same sounds and rhythms. Cultures vary; times change; vantage points differ. That any text should be considered inerrant, infallible, and indelible…that’s what I grew up hearing, but it’s always rung false to me.

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That experience came to mind again this morning.

For the whole I’ve my life, I’ve believed that “Change is gonna come.” But after yet another night of senseless violence, that promise seems further from reality than it has for decades.

Several of my writer friends posted like-minded messages to Facebook: “I have no words,” they said, though many found their voices in the conversations that followed.

I echoed their sentiments; added emoticons and cryptic hashtags, marveling all the while about the new-fangled ways in which we now express these age-old sorrows.

I don’t know why my mind works this way, but a Bible story came to mind. (Do we ever really outgrow the lessons we learned in Sunday School?)

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Forgive me if I leave out any key details, but as I recall, the basic storyline goes something like this:

After they’d wandered through the wilderness for 40 long years, God told Joshua to march the Israelites around the walls of Jericho–seven long days, in absolute silence, after which they’d blare their horns and shout. To his weary, disgruntled charges (After all this time, you’re making us wait?), this edict must’ve seemed an outrage. Maybe, too, they questioned Joshua’s judgment. But that silent marching was, in fact, a blessing in disguise. It forced the Israelites to quiet their minds. Little by little, they turned their gaze in the same direction. Their footfalls settled into a synchronous rhythm.  Their spines straightened, bolstered as they were by the shared belief that they’d soon find themselves in the Promised Land, which lay on the other side of those formidable walls. And on the seventh day, so the story goes, the rabbis blew their horns and everyone shouted, loudly and in unison. And just as God promised, those walls came crashing down.

I’ll leave it to scholars to argue the historical accuracy of this story, and maybe its religious significance. You might have a bone to pick with me for the way I’ve told it. But for today, I’m just ruminating on the value of getting quiet–especially during these dark nights and difficult days–and drawing from our collective stories whatever courage and comfort we might find there.

Art Challenge: Stars at Laguna Beach

The stars aligned for me yet again, in that this week’s Challenge Word enticed me away from my computer and into yet another outdoor adventure.  I grabbed a picnic lunch, my camera, and a couple of  books, and sped down PCH steered my roadster toward Laguna, which is where I photographed this constellation of stars.

There’s so much to love about Cynthia Lord’s upcoming release, A Handful of Stars. I’m reminded of my junior high school friend, Luz, the daughter of a migrant farm worker who takes a lead role in my contribution to the YA anthology, Dear Bully.

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Bibliophiles, don’t you fret! There’s a waxed paper barrier between this sweet little book & the wet sand.

Lucky me, I’ve also got an advanced review copy of Jeannine Atkins’ newest novel, Little Woman in Blue! At a time when women assumed subservient roles on the whole, artist May Alcott steps out from behind her famous sister Louisa’s shadows and becomes the star of her own life. *applauds wildly*

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Little Woman in Blue, sitting pretty on a lifeguard’s rescue watercraft

There’s a shortage of starfish in our local tide pools, so I brought one of my own, for the purpose of this challenge. Funny story: When I was snapping this picture, a cluster of Aussies gathered ’round, talking with animated gestures about what they’d assumed was a gift from the sea, washed ashore by these waves. We laughed about it afterwards, and they joked that they’d brought with them the whales that were breaching off shore before I got there.

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No, he’s not a star. But when this seagull kept wandering into the frame, I decided to give him his moment in the sun.

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This bright yellow bloom is a reflection of the sun itself,  which everyone knows is a star.

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Blue on blue, what a stellar day! I’d rate it five starfish out of five!

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Linkfest! If you want to see other bloggers’ responses to this week’s challenge, click here.

My photographic response to last week’s challenge, coats, is here.