Today I Am the Ocean

Yesterday I wrote about the wonder of Wonder Stump Road, and how for a moment I were the trees. Today, I am the ocean. To be more specific, I am a rock by the ocean.

I sat on the rock, feeling the scene. The waves creeping up to my feet, then scurrying away as if they had done something daring. The ocean breezes playing with my hair. The surf demanding to be heard. The only creatures — if you don’t count me, and how can you since I was a rock — were the seals, pelicans, gulls, and cormorants sunning themselves on a bit of land. (The things that look like sandbags on the edge of the island are seals. The birds in the air are pelicans.)

I’d spent an hour or so walking along a road aptly named Oceanview Road, but though the walk was pleasant, it was still a suburban street made spectacular by the heavy vegetation interspersed with occasional views of the ocean.

I’d planned to walk to the end of the road, but when I got tired, there was no place to stop to eat my little snack. So I headed down a side street, and ended up on a slice of heaven. It’s amazing to me that it’s possible to find waysides by the ocean with no human creature to disturb my rockishness.

So there I sat, sometimes me, sometimes something other, something endless — a rock, a feeling, a being.

Today I am the ocean. Tomorrow I will be . . . whatever the day brings.

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(Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.”)

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Tagged: being the ocean, ocean view, pelicans, rock by the ocean, seals