After the Storm –1.0 — Aboard F/V Rain, Fisherman’s Harbor, Yaquina Bay, Newport, Oregon, USA
“They never found any bodies. Not a one. Nobody floating. They float a long way with life belts too. They must have took it inside. Well, the Greeks got it all. They must have come fast alright. They picked her clean. First there were the birds, then me, then the Greeks, and even the birds got more off of her than I did…” — — - “After the Storm” E. Hemingway
Honestly my first desire was to get out here during the storm, face up on Haceta Head and let the wind and the sideways rain blow all the preceding months of 2020 right out of me. Clean through me and out the top of my head, washing all the way through my bare feet into the mossy earth. A draining. A wash through. A liver cleanse that took all the rest of my organs with it.
But my sense of drama stopped somewhere short of driving out here in the middle of the night while a Pacific gale exploded along the shore with 60 MPH gusts, sustained winds at 40, and two inches of rain. So I waited till morning. I waited until after the storm.
Go ahead. Search for all the metaphors you want. Early Friday morning the 13th and the sun is shining north of Florence and the air is scrubbed so clean you can breathe in and hardly know it is there. Nobody kneeling on your neck. No election results (disputed or not). The closest Covid viral sphere blowing in from somewhere in Asia and the 7,000 miles of pure Pacific Ocean has killed it so dead, it’s like it never existed at all. The fresh breeze is pure enough and cold enough to blow right into the future: A future time of herd immunity or massive vaccines, take your pick. Either way with that much good breathing it’s difficult to not be optimistic. This morning my blood pressure read 134 over 77. Well within my target range.
The storm has passed and there are other storms on the way. But in the meantime it is good to take a deep breath of goodness.
For me it is letting go and continuing to love. Just as simple as that.
Let the red-hatted white supremacists go out in the street and protest in the cold and the sleet and the rain. We’ve been out there for four years. It turned us all blue. Maybe it can do the same for them.
It doesn’t matter. It’s just a lot of noise.
What does matter is that we get on with our lives. We take the goodness and make it into a better everything. Grow more food, eat less meat, consume more locally, design better electric bicycles and charge them with solar panels attached to the roof. Stop buying plastic so strongly that they stop making it. Reach out to those who disagree and forgive them. Tell our own stories and make our own endings. Write history, save the planet.
Yes, it is a winter sun that is shining when I wake up the next day aboard my friend’s fishing boat. A winter sun low in the sky and it is surrounded by clouds so many shades of grey. The Oregon coast is a world of grey and green and white sea foam. It’s chilly and windy and it doesn’t feel very inviting. But it certainly is fresh.
What an amazing storm it was. But now I am here. And we are all (so far) survivors. At least those of you who are reading this.
And the sun will soon be warming us again. Then we can begin again to complain about the heat.
Just think. There is ALWAYS something to complain about. How great is that?
The tide has turned. Let’s enjoy it while we can.
Before the next storm hits. It’s right over there, halfway to Japan, just over the horizon.
AAAAHHHHHH! Take a breath. Goodness, how good it tastes.
