Post Hike. 4 June 2018
/By a strange turn of events, I am now at Holden Beach North Carolina. When I left the PCT, I told my younger sister that I would visit her in early June. She recently moved to Holden Beach from Ohio, and I was very curious to see her home with the wild marsh lands filled with long green marsh grass behind her house. At the end of April, my mother also made the journey from Ohio to live with Laurie in this small coastal town on the Atlantic Ocean. Traveling with me was my father along with Ed and Julie. So for the first time in many years, my entire family is together in a small coastal beach town named Holden Beach. Also present are an abundance of sweet memories that we all share from those early years of our very young lives.
My father and I left Ohio in the very early morning hours after packing up his car with bags filled with light summer clothes along with a cooler containing an assortment of baked goods and prepared Amish cooking from a bakery in Walnut Creek. As Ed and Julie and I would be hiking for a few days along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia on the return trip to Ohio, I also packed my hiking gear - the same gear that made the journey to California and then suddenly back to Ohio.
The 12 hour drive to North Carolina took us through southern Ohio and then into the mountains of West Virginia. Dense fog and pale clumps of soft clouds hovered over the distant rising peaks and nestled into the steep valleys quietly anticipating the first rays of morning light. Our car sped through the darkness along curving roads that swirled up the mountain passes and then descended into broad expansive valleys. When the sun rose from the eastern horizon, the warmer air evaporated the grey haze turning the sky blue and the mountains vibrant green. The world suddenly became filled with rich, intoxicating color. Hours became landmarks which slowly brought us closer to our final destination. And then soon those forever hours became rushing cascading wishful minutes. With great anticipation I found myself in a small beach town called Holden Beach in southern North Carolina. My sister’s new home. My mother’s new home. And I an eager visitor. I found myself relieved and grateful to have arrived. My sister welcomed my father and me into her gracious home. And then my mother was there and the love for my family lifted me far beyond the careful exhausting navigation of never ending highways - those spilling concrete pathways that connected Ohio to this new wonderful place located on the shores of the Atlantic ocean.
I have always loved the ocean and the hot sandy ever evolving beaches. To find myself in Holden Beach now after all of the recent travels - and the hot sandy PCT - I was amazed at the breathtaking chronology of events, of time and destiny. Hearing the oceans’s swelling water and expansive release upon the wet sandy shore, I closed my eyes and breathed in the salty air and let go of every single burden of my life. I sat for hours and let the hot wind sweep across my face and let the sun pour its magnificent heat into my older skin. I felt time moving forever forward. Each break of inevitable wave propelled time endlessly on and on - never ending, constant and forever until the end of time. I felt small and insignificant. The ocean is huge. The world is huge. And this was a moment in my life - quivering, desperate to keep up, striving to exist - a single coarse grain of sand atop the millions forever shifting around me.
For now our days are spent on hot sandy beaches. Our nights are spent sharing glorious meals while watching the sun set beyond the green marsh grass and distant trees of my younger sister’s home. Julie, Ed, my father and I have rented a beach house that we retreat to each night. On our first night we witnessed a storm coming in off the coast - lightning blazing through the clouds, rain pummeling the ground, eyes glowing with excitement.
And with the high electric energy of that storm came another kind of high emotional gathering. Family and history and modes of understanding can create moments of tension and confused communication. As we all grow older, our relationships naturally change. We experience that change in different ways and at different times. Tonight those shifts in relationships spread out, scrapping against each other. For tonight I found myself unable to find compassion and understanding, Words were said. Feelings were wounded. I was left struggling to come to terms my own responsibility toward emotional resonance while lifting myself beyond the immediate to surround myself in memories of family, of gratitude and love. Why can’t I let my sensitivity wash over me like the crashing waves upon the sand? Why can't I be generous with empathy and careful with my words?
I hope the wind is strong tomorrow. I hope the wind carries away anything I did and said today, sending everything into the ocean air, flying high above the swelling wet only to dissipate into nothingness. And then forgotten.
Today at the beach, my younger sister, my father and my mother made their way from the hot sand to the awaiting waves of the warm ocean. As they neared the salty water, they drifted away from each other so that they stood facing the ocean as solitary individuals. They stood there and let the water spill onto their feet again and again and again. They faced the ocean as the wind spread out around them, curving around their arms and legs, shoulders and head. I wondered what they were contemplating at that moment, each staring out into the vast horizon of rippling water as the air swept across their skin. But I knew that I was feeling an immense swelling of complete love for each one of them - now in the that singular moment and then of course forever. The power of family. The power of the ocean. The power of love.
