Sunday, Oct. 14, 2012

For the majority of my life, I’ve lived close to nature.  As such, I’ve seen both the charming and sadder faces nature presents.  Now that I live at the beach, I have to learn the various faces the nature here displays.  Most parts I love.  But there are some—the same ones that have always bothered me—death and dying—I find hard to stomach.

Walking/running along the beach is an adventure that I thrive on each and every day.  No two outings are the same—the beach offering up an endless supply of sights for me to behold.  Some are lovely.  Others are breathtaking.  Still more make me pause, wondering over them.  And then there are some that cause a lump in my throat that I have to choke down.  It’s either that or burst into tears.  Today I stumbled across one of the latter.

I strolled the water’s edge when up the beach a little ways I caught sight of something…a shape…one big enough to cause that lump in my throat to form.  The one that tells me not to look.  But…like a person drawn to a train wreck, I’m helpless to turn away.  The closer I got, the larger that lump formed, until I found it hard to breathe. 

What caused such a reaction?  A large sea lion that had washed ashore.  It was positioned as if it was resting.  But its energy told me otherwise…or rather, the fact that it had no energy.  No life force.  Instead what circled the sea lion was an invisible yet oh, so tangible cloudbank of death and overwhelming sadness.

I’ve always loved sea lions.  Since spotting my first ones as a little girl, I fell in love with the barking sea mammals that others found unattractive and annoying.  The one I found on the beach today had the same allure.  Yet…there was that overwhelming aura of sadness….

Unsure why I was more affected by the death of this beautiful sea creature than others I’ve stumbled upon, I took a closer look.  Didn’t take me long to realize why a cloak of sadness, heavy enough to make breathing a chore, hung in the surrounding air. 

Nature is a never-ending cycle of life and death.  Those that die are replaced by new life.  New hope.  New beginnings.  But for this fallen sea lion, life and death became a cruel twist of fate.  Why?  Because the sea lion, which was female, had died in the process of giving birth, her pup only partly free of her protective womb.  In this, nature was savage, not allowing a new life to fully emerge and robbing the mother of her own vitality.

I had to pass by that macabre scene twice while on my walk.  Each time, my stomach cinched, throat ached and I felt the urge to cry for the mother and her pup.  For two lives cut short.  For the one that would never be.  For the one that had given hers, trying to bring another into the world.  Today I was reminded of nature’s tangible grasp on life and death.  Of it’s sorrowful side.  The experience left me feeling melancholy.  Didn’t crush me, just reminded me how affected I am—have always been—when faced with the harsher realities of nature.