Giving Back a Gift of Beauty

This morning when I walked the beach, I followed the path of dark seaweed at the edge of the high-tide line. It was a cool morning for june, the sky blue…fuschia rosa rugosa blooming on the dunes. An almost perfect day…i had a bone to pick with everyone who discarded their plastic water bottle caps, mother’s day balloons, and juice pouches. Woven into strands of seaweed were bits and pieces of trash. My feet bare want to touch a pristine earth, I want to think that reverence arises naturally the way the waves meet the shore and that gratitude is as buoyant as the three floating clouds above the horizon. When I walk I am possessed by the land. I do not own this stretch of shore, or any land but a kind of ownership comes from loving and knowing a place. Walking gives you a sense of possession – noticing the tern and plover, the compass grass growing, the seaweed. I don’t need a “title” to do this because I belong to the land. I acknowledge my place and my relationship with all that inhabits and grows on this land. I understand that the sea and the earth as my ancient birthplace. I created a circle of wood and tree branches, collected as I walked…each weathered by wind, sun and sea . I stood facing the sea. From the center 8 steps in the 4 directions. First South. North, East, and West. An opening was left at the southern arc of the circle. Like a japanese enso I wanted the world to flow in and out and to allow for the possibility of exchange and change. 36 steps, a slow, deliberate walking meditation around the circle’s circumference to honor earth, to ask that we remember that we are kin with all living beings, that we acknowledge our role as stewards and to walk lightly.