Encounters with Nature

 

My mother did not drive when I was young so we would go to Rockaway Beach on the Q53 bus line. That was decades ago. By coincidence I passed by that bus stop recently and the Q53 line is still there and still going back and forth to Rockaway Beach. It was a long ride but I had my Hi Q game with me and kept busy. The last stop on the bus is 118 street and Rockaway Beach.  

We would find a place to put our blanket very close to the water. Back then we didn’t use sunscreen, sunscreen wasn’t even invented yet. I got quite a few sunburns and an occasional sun poisoning.  

Mother would rent one umbrella and a couple of chairs and once settled I was taken away by the enormous sound of the powerful ocean.  Between filling my bucket with sand and finding seashells and knocking on dead sting ray shells I would find myself internally swinging with the crashing and ebbing flow of the ocean.  

The smell was gorgeous, the sand was hot and my little body was sticky. Bouncing in and out of the little waves did not give much relief.  

I can remember sitting on the blanket under the shade of that heavy fabric blue and red and green umbrella falling into this kind of meditation, a trance, I was one with the beach and the earth and the water and the sand and I was still and grounded and unaware of anyone else. Quite a feat for a child.  

I think that experience set my awareness to find the soothing sound of water anywhere I could find it.  

Hearing the rain has me stop what I am doing and focus on the tapping and pitter patter and drizzle and sometimes torrential downpours that clean the streets with flooding.  

I spend time at the East River where there are plenty of seats to sit on and watch the sometimes glassine nonmoving energy of the river. Sometimes the river burbles and travels over the jagged rocks below. At low tide the rocks are visible. If a storm is approaching the water is rough with white caps thrashing around. The tug boats and barges travel easily up and down the river. The water taxis ferry people from Queens to Manhattan to Brooklyn and even the Bronx.  

There is a stream near my daughter's house that I can only access by standing on a small bridge with tall gates, the sound of bubbling water over rocks and branches captures the movement it makes.  

I have had the habit of keeping the tap water running for the soothing sound that keeps the peace of running water in my unconscious awareness for a long time. I found out from an engineer I know that when the pipes in my apartment run brown it means there is a buildup of sediment and that I must run the water for hours to get the pipes clean again. What a joy to run the water for hours.  

Then there is the thunder of my tears as they fall as raindrops onto paper while I write.  Cleansing tears, like the cleansing waves of the ocean, like the cleansing East River, like the cleansing stream, like cleaning the dirty pipes with running tap water I am brought back to Mother Nature and her bringing balance and peace and power and cleansing and refreshment with water. 

Georgia

8.2021