Hot August Nights

Sometimes memories seem to come from nowhere.

Sitting on the back deck on a hot August night, waiting on the dogs, I listen to the sounds of the distant interstate traffic, a random train whistle, and several unsweet choruses of cicadas and crickets. For some unknown reason, it makes me think of the ocean and I remember the sound of the tide, the gentle, dark water as it washed up and out and back onto the rocky beach.  It had a steadiness to it, a calm rhythm that comforted even as it stirred a sense of loneliness.  It was the last sound I heard before being lulled to sleep and the first sound I heard when I woke.  It was music and magic and leaving it broke my heart each and every time.

Since then I’ve visited the ocean often from Hawaii to Gloucester, Cape Cod and Maine – even Florida for a time and a flying trip through California – but nothing comes close to those still, dark Nova Scotia nights listening to the tides.  Nothing brings me home like the moonlight on the water and the lights of Brier Island across the Fundy Bay.  The Atlantic water was freezing cold and the coastline a treachery of rock formations so I imagine it has to do with childhood – ever fleeting – and summers that ended all too quickly.

The world I live in nowadays is citified, made of cement and modern conveniences - computers and cell phones and drive thru everythings – instead of salt spray, it smells of exhaust fumes.  Instead of the moon making a shimmery path across the ocean, it filters itself through cypress and magnolia trees and gets lost in the shadows.  When I look out my windows, I see parallel parked cars and property lines, not pastureland or a blackberry patch.  Traffic is not an oxen driven hay wagon but a rumbling parish mosquito truck, spraying its poison after dark like an inept, creeping prowler. 

Progress, I suppose.  And growing up, giving up childish notions.  Forward instead of back.

But here’s the thing – the ocean is so much more than a childish notion – and it’s not a better world.

The cool wave didn't last but a week or so but it was nice while it was here.

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one its net of wonder forever ~ Jacques Cousteau