Today, as I approached my office, I saw that the tide was very low. It had been a morning of busy thoughts and doings—I had not given myself the chance to have my usual morning moments of solitude and getting my head together. And I had arrived early to work to “get things done.” There were emails to answer and calendars to fill and people to call and a book to keep working on and more…but my head was filled and not very together, and the tide was low. So I went for a low tide walk.
Around here, a low tide walk is a tricky business. It's not just an obvious choice to go straight to the water’s edge because there are barnacles to avoid crunching underfoot, and boggy sand where clams have made their homes. But for all that and more, it is a wonderful place to slow down and pick one’s way through the low tide landscape.
Usually a brisk walker, I took the opportunity to amble and see what there was to see. Which was a lot that is usually covered up by water, of course. Creatures lurked and darted in small tide pools as I clambered over the rocky shoreline left behind during the ice age glacier scrape. Instead of the blooming flow of sea anemones, their “flowers” were shut tight.
Seashells were begging my hands to pick them up, but alas, they had their creatures attached, so I couldn’t do that. And so many rocks, so little room in my pockets. But that was fine, because this was about observing and admiring, not harvesting or collecting.
There are so many interesting life forms under the surface of our usually flooded lives—life forms we don't get to see because we don't have or don't make the time to go beneath the surface of everyday busyness: There are blossoming emotions or interesting thoughts or the sparkle of appreciation and gratitude or imaginative dreams.…
After the low tide ramble, I entered my office, and…
You thought I was going to say I got so much done, right? Well, maybe. I took a few more moments—ok, it was another hour—to sit in the big fluffy chair I usually invite my clients to sit in and meditated on the water’s surface, sparkling in the sun. There’s all kinds of life on the surface too.
I am so grateful I stopped to observe and enjoy all of it: the shallows and the deep, the covered and the exposed. Now to work I go….
blessings,
Elke
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