Into the Wild
When the Civilized World Becomes Less Than Civilized
I’m not entirely certain what it was. Likely a combination of the current disharmonies in the world. The angst that swirled in the atmosphere and accented almost every exchange, every thought, every conversation about which lives do or do not matter and how, precisely, the epidemic should or should not be handled. I just knew I felt it deep down, a disquiet. An unrest.
After a night of broken sleep, I looked at my husband.
“I need to go to the ocean.”
The stars aligned, we coordinated vacation time from our busy jobs, and five days later we were pulling into the garage of a last-minute rental. I made a beeline from our porch to the beach beyond. With my bare feet submerged in sand, I watched the waves crash and my children run in the surf after months of isolation. In the absence of appropriate words, they screamed their delight, and I thought they must feel it too. The awesomeness of the untamed geography. The wildness which seemed at once to settle the spirit.
We were right where we needed to be.
There are endless varieties of sea-sides across the globe: white sand beaches, black sand beaches, red sand beaches, and beaches comprised of stone. There are grassy beaches and cliffside beaches, and the same diversity exists in the color of the water. There are turquoise waters, emerald waters, and every color in between. In the Carolinas, the ocean holds a different quality. Blithe colors from the Caribbean travel north, giving way to a moody grey-blue. Here the ocean seems to brood a bit more, the upswelling of colder, more sediment-rich water yields less transparency to those things swimming beneath the surface.
These are the beaches on which I was raised, and as much as I enjoy venturing to all the world’s seasides, the somber tenor of the Carolina beaches seems to suit me most naturally. The enormity of their doleful waters gives me perspective of my smallness, and the melancholy atmosphere helps me sort my feelings and, perhaps counterintuitively, find peace.
My brother-in-law worded it well that evening as we sat on the deck eating shrimp pesto and watching the tide claw its way up the sand under the light of the moon.
“We are in the wilderness.”
It seemed a perfect characterization. The wilderness is uncultivated. Chaos reigns, and the order of the developed world relinquishes its hold. And so it seems interesting to me that we hold a primal urge to seek it. To escape order and endeavor to find peace amidst chaos.
Perhaps it’s because order is a misnomer. For it is chaos that reigns in our sophisticated world right now.
The facts of life don’t change here, just the perspective. Mother nature harbors her own harsh realities, her own circles of life. As I run the shoreline each morning at daybreak, I observe the most recent local phenomenon: scores of washed up cannonball jellyfish. The beaches are littered with them. “Jellyfish graveyards” they are called.
Despite being particularly remarkable this year, marine biologists describe the event as normal. Jellyfish travel in groups, or blooms, and significant disruptions of weather patterns or winds can beach them, killing them quickly as their water-composed bodies dry in the sun. I try to rescue some of them, to throw them back into the sea, but it’s likely too late. I remind myself that it is natural. Their bodies will feed crabs, seagulls, and sea turtles. It is a biological cycle.
In this age-old wilderness, order holds primacy. I can sleep soundly here.
Originally published at https://facingmonsters.com on June 9, 2020.
