the swash zone

Hello. How are you? It's been a while, eh? A lot has happened since I last took notice of my lonely little blog. Life, death, the election here in the U.S., and a lot of drinking. Today is the last day of my 57th year on this planet.  Tomorrow is the start of my 58th. I spent the weekend in a long celebration of life. I was with friends, paying tribute to a good friend who died in October. Along the way, I also began to think about paying tribute -- honoring -- my own life. I wrote that I was with friends, but I have come to realize I was with part of my tribe. That is a huge realization for me because I have spent a large portion of my life believing myself to be an outsider. It was one of many stories I told myself. Over the past year, I've taken the time to be curious about the stories I tell myself, to wonder if those stories are true or false. During the weekend I discovered that most of those stories are false. I am not an outsider, but part of a larger whole and w...

swash On the fretted seam between water and land, ocean breakers send a rushing sheet of seawater -- a swash -- up the beach. The swash receding, pulling seaward with a drag force that takes the sand right out from under your bare feet, every particle felt, is backwash. In The Edge of the Sea , Rachel Carson called the swash zone "a world of force and change and constant motion, where even the sand acquires some of the fluidity of water."   ~ Ellen Meloy, Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape I've always been fascinated by the sea, something many people have and could say or write. I have many photos of waves, and even more photos of swash. I love the white foamy appearance of the water as it washes to shore, especially the phosphorescence at night. In one swoop, the water changes everything by moving the sand, and whatever else might be there, to and fro. Sometimes the swoop is gentle, sometimes it's harsh and turbulent. The swash brings treasu...