Nature Response #2

Do you ever sit in the sand at the beach and just listen? Or try to pick out the different smells as they fly by? I can smell the salt of the sea and the hint of the barbeque being prepared down the way. I can hear the birds off in the distance fighting for the attention of the children by the water’s edge and the parents unleashing pleads to “Please stop drawing them closer.” They can come over to my blanket. That’s okay. I have no food to offer but my I’ll sit quietly while they snoop around. This is the place where I feel my soul come alive. Where there water meets the land and the boundaries between free and confined blur. Some of my earliest memories are of the open water. I can remember being unable to stand, unable to float, unable to do anything but clutch my arms and legs around my mom as she floats like a jelly up and over the waves. “Let them take you. You’ll be fine.” “Allow yourself to rise with the water, it doesn’t want to take you under. Let go with your legs, just hold my fingers.” This was how I was taught to swim. The same as my siblings, with our mother’s hand ready to save us when we inevitably fell under the surface. To this day I feel that I cannot be away from the water. I feel the need to have open water in my life regularly. I may have been raised on a farm but I was made for the water.