All Birds Have Got to Poop
Here we are again. Thursday looks a lot like Wednesday (yesterday) but also completely different. There is plenty of blue sky, but the clouds look softer and a little more spread out. The morning air is cool as it has been the last week. As I walk my dog in the morning, the back of my head and shoulders catch the sun every so often and it feels wonderful, and now as I arrive at the beach a couple hours later, I find this is happening a little more frequently. As I step from the concrete of the stairs to the black top just above the beach, my feet notice the change in temperature of the warm asphalt that better retains the sun’s heat.
Of course it is nice down here. That should go without saying but I do have to say it. It just feels right to say it. It’s like if I had a pet elephant that I kept in a room and I entertained guests in that room every day, I imagine that I would likely always mention the elephant.
The waves look a little larger today but not particularly large. The water doesn’t feel noticeably colder on my feet. That is until I start to swim. It quickly becomes clear that the temperature has dropped today. I was not really expecting this because the buoy data looked like an exact duplicate of yesterday. I guess this is more proof that you can’t always trust the numbers. They are a good general guide but certainly not gospel truth. You can just never be sure what the ocean is going to give you in any specific time and place.
After I am in the water for about a minute, I pause and just take in a few breaths. I have that feeling one gets just as an “ice cream head ache” is about to hit. It never fully does but my neck feels like it is tensing up. I know these are all just the initial feelings one has while adapting to colder water and it will all subside soon but not quite soon enough. It does subside but there remains just a low grade coldness. I really do wonder what the temperature is. Most of the swim feels pretty darn close to 60, but can that be? Yesterday felt like 64. Then again, who do I think that I am? I have no water thermometer on me.
So water temperature aside, it is a great swim. It’s cold but I don’t feel hypothermic. This might just be another one of those “set point” recalibrations where my body has to get used to something different. I try not to over think the temperature and just give myself over to the water. I try to truly feel the water (not difficult) and instead of placing a negative judgement on the cold, I try to focus on the energy level. What is comfort? What is discomfort? When does one transition to the other. Is that line fixed? I find these questions fascinating. This is the perfect place to ask them. I’m not super cold but just kind of cold. It’s not painful. So why do I imagine the cold to be uncomfortable? It’s just another sensation. The means to becoming NOT cold are obvious - get out f the water. But why would I want to do that?
Just take a look around here? I’m seeing things and having an experience with nature that I’m just not going to have outside of the water. I suppose I could wear a wetsuit, but that would just be a barrier between me and the ocean and it would filter this entire experience through a synthetic apparatus. I have not done any deep research in this area but I am pretty sure that humans have been getting into the ocean without wetsuits since…well I don’t know exactly, but I’m sure it is a very very very very long time. Why ruin a good thing? There is something primordial about all of this that I want to tap into.
Everything is beautiful here. There are big dark clouds in the distance. There are boats and lobster trap buoys scattered over the surface of the water. I see white water breaking inshore. I see hills and baren bluffs along both ends of the coast. There is golden sunshine and blue sky. There is a horizon that extends as far as forever where few living souls exist above but innumerable strange and odd creatures exist below. Water is everywhere. It is deep and it is wide and it is moving - rising and falling and breaking and ebbing and flowing.
I see pelicans. A big old line of them pass over me that I see out of the corner of my eye. I grab my camera and I think I am too late but then a straggler whips right by me and, alas, I am unprepared to capture it. I see gulls and terns and a cormorant flies so close to me that I can see it shit into the water. I imagine this must be happening all the time. All birds have got to poop.
I swim almost to the Monarch Bay Beach Club and the return trip does feel a little warmer. It also seems like I am going faster which I don’t entirely understand because the current feels like it is moving north. Let’s be honest, there is nothing about all of this that I really understand. Every bit of this is a mystery to me and it shows me how much of a mystery we all are.
What is going on here as we move through life? I wish I knew. Sometimes everything feels like a big confusing puzzle and the pieces change shape in my hand. I think I am, we are all, here to learn something. Perhaps we are all here to learn the same thing and yet different things. I emerge from the ocean and walk on the sand toward the stairs and feel bewildered. I open the door to my car and wonder to myself, what am I learning? Am I learning? Am I getting all of this? I don’t even know where to start and I certainly don’t know where to end.
