A Love Letter to the Sea

 

When I stand next to the Pacific Ocean, I feel as if I am in the presence of something ancient and indestructible, solid, yet forever moving and restless. It is rhythm. Endless, over and over. And the noise that soaks my ears and sizzles on my skin. The constant to and fro, the wet thud and crack of curling white foam as it slams on the shallows one more time. And as one cymbal crash of a wave fades into a shimmer and a fizz on the glistening agate sand, there is another waiting its turn to pulse and beat and slam.

Bold, rippling white peaks thrust themselves up toward the sky and then down, fast and unforgiving, releasing cold, salty spray that spreads in the wind and lands on my face like a soft, moist caress. It’s one rare time that I feel no desire to be in the water; it’s enough to be with it but apart from it, only letting its essence touch me. 

I wouldn’t survive long in the cold waves and the murky clouds of undercurrent tell me that the depths below are hungry for the less capable and unaware. I love that surging power and dark energy beneath the glassy, crested surface. It feeds memories of my life with water in very different parts of my world. 

Mum running across the sandbank yelling, ‘Get out!’ as my sister and I howled with delight, being tossed like rag dolls in waves three times our height. My grandad smiling as he guided me, ten years old, turning the wheel of our small fishing boat steering between hidden rocks just outside the harbour - women’s names I’ve long forgotten - dark gloomy shadows that lay in wait, just below the surface, to catch forgetful or unsuspecting sailors on the way back to port.

Me, head down, floating in the still, deep water of a sunlit cove and nosy seals staring me right in the eye as they slide below me; a lightning bolt of a dolphin speeding under our small scully boat, making me stop my rollicking, sit down and grasp the wooden sides, holding my breath. The moment of seeing grown men I trusted turn white as they lean back from gazing over the side of the boat and stare at the thick fishing line in their hands. Then hearing my father’s voice... ‘Get in the cabin’.

Seeing this mass of Pacific waves, the ripples, the ever-changing shapes and knowing the underneath, the unknown and the strength, power, danger it holds. That’s the beauty. Trying to comprehend that so much of this living, moving rhythm covers the world comforts me and the idea of being alone seems a pointless exercise for a fleeting moment.

When I stand here on a wild beach next to the Pacific Ocean, I am always waiting for the return of a grey humpback whale who we chased as it ambled through the waves along the shoreline, only thirty feet away. I’m always waiting for a repeat of the moment it disappeared beneath the foam. I’m waiting to see it once again thrust its body vertically out of the water into the air like a freshly carved statue and look at me. I’m waiting to look into his eye once more and feel that connection with the deep.

And to feel breathless with love and awe for the vastness and the unknown.

Colin Stevens