One of my favorite places is on the coast of the ocean. Any ocean. But preferably a place with a wide horizon and plenty of water to watch.
There is something infinitely soothing about the swell of an ocean. Lie on your back and float, and you feel the regularity of the mechanism of waves. Up to the crest, falling to the trough, again and again, as if in a giant rocking chair. If you hadn’t to stay afloat on your own, you might fall asleep to the endless rhythm. Like on an air mattress or a boat. The smaller the device, the closer the connect to the swell.
Okay, not entirely true, for the seventh wave is usually a higher and bigger one than the others. Don’t ask me why; just count for yourselves. It’s a common secret surfers know about, too.
Even if I’m just sitting on the beach and observe the gentle waves, I feel this calm rise in me. I watch flotsam riding on the crests or where the waves are breaking. From where did it make its way?
The ripples in the sand are the imprint of the underbelly of the waves where they have been braked. Sometimes I seem to see the same pattern in the clouds in the sky, and I wonder whether the same mechanisms that work down here are working up there as well. We are dealing with water in both cases, after all.
Sometimes, when my husband and I are out crabbing on Puget Sound in our little nutshell of a boat, I simply close my eyes and lean back for a while to enjoy the swell. And then I realize the power of the smallest breeze that manipulates the surface and causes the waves to ripple. Or the impact of faster motor boats cutting through, causing the water to pile up where the boats’ masses pushed it out. The regular, soft swell turns into a wild, irregular ride with sharp, high crests and abrupt troughs. We have to hold on to the hull not to be tossed overboard. After a while, the same waves come back, still irregular, yet a bit less wild, returned from the shoals, the reefs, the cliffs. Until the swell becomes its beautiful, regular self again.
The swell of the ocean is a bit like life. There are long periods of the same old in our personal lives. We adjust to them and close our eyes. We are lulled. Until some outside event has us ride out our little life-boat in vicious ups and downs.
Is it that why I relate so to the ocean? Because it is so much like my life?
What do ocean swells mean to you?
