I’ve always lived within a 30-minute drive to water.
Growing up in Southern California, my mother would take us to the beach any chance she could. Sandy sandwiches and a few shovels at Seal Beach made cheap and cheerful entertainment for me and my younger sisters. In high school, friend’s and I would hitch rides to the beach when we ditched school or on a Saturday night gather blankets and wood for a bonfire at Huntington Beach.
In my late twenties I lived in Portland, Oregon and got to know the Willamette and Columbia Rivers well, running along the paths or hiking the trails that ran parallel to the silvery water.
And now, where I live in Seattle, I am surrounded by water. To the west Elliot Bay reflects the skyscrapers of downtown. To the north Lake Union lies in the shadow of the Space Needle. And to the east, Lake Washington, the state’s second largest freshwater lake. This is the body of water nearest my home. I walk or drive to it often and during the depths of shutdowns, I ran to it each morning to watch the sun rise, to make certain it did.
I have a deep connection with each of these bodies of water. Not from swimming in their depths, (this inner-city kid never learned to swim, but that is another story) but from gazing out from shore. As a child, the Pacific Ocean sparkled, and I imagined millions of diamonds bobbing on its surface. I looked out to the sea and whispered a prayer that a whale would surface at the exact moment was watching.
The Columbia River healed me as I aimlessly hiked its trails the year after a tough break up. Each time I resurfaced from the forest, the River was there to greet me, to reward me for surviving another brutal hike, another painful day, until neither were difficult anymore.
And here in Seattle, years later, Lake Washington is mine. Its closeness and beauty and restorative powers are an overflow of all the goodness in my life. I can return to the water on a melancholy day to find it is not as bad as I thought. And I come to the water to celebrate when I sense abundance. In sunrise or sunset, storm or shine, I am enchanted that the colors are never the same. Both the sky and water churn with grey and blue, but also and often, pink and orange. And against all this vastness, against a view as splendid as this, I too am here.
I. Too. Am. Here.
The truth of this never ceases to astonish me.
Oh this is beautiful, Shemaiah....
Yup, I saw the eagle as I was recording my post yesterday.