Spring-like sights lifting the spirit

CHERRIL DOTY

Trying to remember the Gulf is like trying to re-create a dream....

We know we must go back if we live, and we don’t know why.

JOHN STEINBECK, “THE LOG

FROM THE SEA OF CORTEZ”

Awareness takes on new meaning.

The groundhog has returned to his hole in the eastern part of the

United States. In spite of this, I feel springtime in my bones.

Leaving the house, I walk out into the lavender morning to see ...

white, frothy waves scouring the shoreline at high tide ...

cream-colored blossoms tinged with deep maroon markings adorning a

fig tree ... playful sea lion pups frolicking with dolphins in salute

to the springtime of their lives. How can it not yet be spring?

The rise and fall of the pups is an energetic mime of the

dolphins’ gray bodies as both creatures vanish beneath the deep

blue-green of the surface, only to rise again, sparkling, in the foam

created in their own passing. Rise ... and fall ... and rise again --

the mesmerizing motion and its rhythm capture and hold attention and

awareness as they move southward through the bay.

Weighty cares disappear with these marine mammal divers beneath

the sea’s surface in the grounding and centering of the instant. Yet,

even as the present moment takes over and becomes everything, I am

taken backward in time to just a brief and yet so very far distant

time ago on the Sea of Cortez.

On the last day of 2003 -- a year filled with much upheaval in the

world around all of us; a year in which events had divided many of us

into distinct camps on myriad issues -- I sat in silence as the sun

rose on the Baja California bay where we were camped. Notes from my

journal allow me now to “re-create the dream”:

Sun rising. Two heron sit sentinel on the shoreline. Dolphins ply

the fields of the bay. Waiting pelicans float on the calm surface of

the sea. Small lapping sound of waves washes against the clam-lined

shore. Icy fingers write. Sea gulls sound morning call to arms. Dawn.

I am alive.

The fruit salad colors -- brilliant reds, oranges, and pinks -- of

dawn give way. Muted, softer shades of peaches and cantaloupes

replace the mangoes and watermelons of moments ago. The dolphins move

northward through the bay -- their rise and fall easy rhythm into

which to fall. The world of nature is all alive too.

Two white egrets walk down the shoreline toward me. A fish jumps

at least four feet off the water. I breathe onto my cold fingers to

keep them warm and moving. The cold pierces and burns -- bites at the

tips -- as I listen and wait. Just the lap of the waves and the

occasional call of one of the many shorebirds can be heard as we all

wait and wait and wait ... here it comes ... almost here now ... the

light brightens ... anticipation ... and brighter ... and more ...

almost ... almost ... I want just to look -- and dare not -- at the

brilliance as it bursts over the top of the hills on the opposite

side of the bay ... not yet ... wait ... Ah, the ecstasy of the

moments of waiting in awareness themselves!

As at last the sun shines brightly over the bay, glistening and

sparkling on the water, birds lift off the shore to their day’s

activities and I, too, rise into the coming of the day, ready for all

its rich possibility.

Time. What is it? Can we re-create intensely felt moments from

their precious place in our minds and our hearts and, thus, have time

all over again? Awareness just may be the key. It is when we fall

into robot-like ways of seeing and thinking and doing that we become

lost. We lose touch, not only with the surroundings, but with the

very deepest and best in ourselves. While you are here, wherever here

is, it is important to be here in awareness. This is where the

learning, the growing, the abundance, the creativity -- all of it --

lies.

* CHERRIL DOTY is a creative living coach, writer, artist and

walker who lives and works in Laguna Beach. To schedule a coaching

session or to comment, contact her by e-mail at [email protected] or

by phone at (949) 251-3993.