The day was just
beginning around me; those few moments that are the best of the day because in
the back of your mind, despite what you hope for and what you do to try to
advert it, you know it’s probably not going to get any better. I pulled the
phone out of my sling and turned it off, a defiant act consciously made in the
desire to extend the perfection of the morning just a little longer.
From my perch in a
rock garden above a small flat I could see clearly across the Caribbean blue-green
sandy bottom in front of me. A bluebird sky above wrapping itself around a
rising sun, the water remarkably calm and just enough movement in the air for
the smell of the salt and the water to physically brush past my face. In my
mind all I could hear was the Piano Exit to Layla. I didn’t just hear it, I
felt it.
In the water the
bass had pushed one of the largest schools of bait I’d seen in a long time up
into the rocks and were gorging themselves on sand eels and silversides. I just
stood there, rod in hand, and watched mesmerized in the knowledge that this has
been going on far longer than we’ve tried to control the world around us and
hoping that it will continue long after we’re gone. I watched as the
stripers seemingly worked together to hold the school of bait against the rocks
while they all fed. Just back from the flat where the bright blue water turned
to a dark green the heads of two seals bobbed along obvious in their attempts
to dart in and pick off the bass at the back of the pack. I wondered if farther
out behind the seals there were sharks biding their time to take a run at them.
It was a thing of
beauty watching the natural order of things play out in front of me. The struggle
of each party intrigued me, the bait schooling and moving as one to prevent
their demise, the bass doing much the same to both feed and elude the seals
behind them. I watched the bass as they corralled and penned the bait and
marveled in the idea that they were working together. I remember a time when I
thought, perhaps naively, that we, the human race, worked in the same way. I
lost myself in that thought for a few minutes. When I looked back in the water,
clouds had moved in and just as sudden as it had started, it was over.
I stood there for a
few more minutes wondering if I should move on to find more fish or call it a
day. I turned to walk back up the beach and stopped to pick up a few remnants
of consumerism force fed to us by talking heads, hash tags and influencers; a
crushed beer can, a fancy sneaker and a Starbucks mega sized plastic cup. For
all that we have gained, I wondered, what have we lost. It’s tragic; something
within our grasp yet it’s slipping away.
Don’t let it slip
away.
South River, MA
13 February 2019
