Combing the beach–and my heart–on New Year’s Day

A subtle pastel sky lures me outside, but it’s cold, with a light breeze off the Strait. Like a heliotrope that barely knows which way to turn, I set off on an afternoon walk to lift my face toward the scant sunlight and say goodbye to the year. Thanks to the tugging of the young moon setting dimly in the west, the beach is extra wide. Thin bands of clouds hover over the islands and the mountains, centering me in the famous blue hole. Of course I’m alone on the beach. With the temperature in the low 40s, the day doesn’t shout: Come on down to the beach—except to me. Cold never kept me from anything.

Besides, winter beachcombing often rewards me with some of my best prizes. The first item I pick up is a white, heart-shaped shell fragment about an inch long. I can’t tell what kind of animal it used to house—the sea has worn away it’s original form and redesigned it as a heart—an iconic outline I often notice nestled among sticks and stones. Since I collect organic heart-shaped things, I add it to my pocket and begin a meditation on its possible meaning.

Could it be an omen for my year ahead?
Or a nudge to be more loving toward myself—or others?
Or is there some part of my heart I have lost and now found?
But that’s the thing about omens—they can only be proved in retrospect.

The water is quite calm today—no sign of the big logs I saw bouncing along yesterday, carrying full loads of gulls out for a thrill ride. Next I find a perfect crescent shell, the top of one of my favorites, the bivalve jingle shell. (So named because of their delightful sound when clinked together, jingle shells are often used as wind chimes.) And not far off, I see the shimmering bottom half, with a hole worn away in the center. (Which I actually like, as it makes it easier to string onto my deer fence.)

But when I reach into my pocket to add them, I realize there’s a hole in the bottom—and my found heart is now lost. It feels vaguely important to reclaim it, to carry this small heart home with me as an article of hope. Or proof. Or desire. I retrace my footprints in the firm sand but cannot find it again.

Several gulls are bobbing in the gentle surf, crying out as I near them. I screech back a greeting in my best gullspeak. One rises up from the water and flaps her wings in response.

I feel such a bond with all gulls.

Just this morning, I was delighted by a flock of thirty or so wheeling in a tight bunch at the edge of the bluff, hollering, diving and all frothed up over something. Perhaps one of the resident eagles paused in a hemlock to sun herself. The gulls and crows love to gang up on the eagles and harass them—probably just protecting their nesting areas.

A bright red tanker inches along the Strait toward port. The crew will be happy to be in town for New Year’s Eve, especially since alcohol is now forbidden on such ships. I say a prayer for the safe passage of this and all tankers that ply these waters—nearly 5,000 trips a year through here. Tankers that are full to the brim with crude oil. It would take just one Valdez to ruin these pristine beaches for a very long time. I don’t like the odds.

There are lots of large, colorful stones exposed today near the tideline. As I poke among them with my driftwood walking stick, I spot the pock-marked outside of a half-buried giant rock scallop. I uncover it and shake off the sand. It’s the largest, heaviest one I’ve ever found, nearly an inch thick in places and weighing about a pound. What I love most about it, is the bright purple color of the hinge area where it was once attached to its other half. Tucked into a hollow is a tiny dark limpet. The shell further reveals its age by the several dozen small barnacles attached to the inside. About seven inches long, it just fits into my huge hand.

It is symbolic to me, to find this big sturdy scoop of a shell on the cusp of a new year. A solid vessel, it’s fully capable of containing all sorts of things. It reminds me that I, too, am a vessel—for joy, for new experiences and challenges, for fresh ideas and insights, for whatever the new year brings to live in my shell. I open to it all.

The sun is sending its last glimmers onto the water before slipping behind the mountains—and it’s only 3:30. These are fragile days on the 48th parallel. I’ve lost whole—but brief—afternoons engrossed in a book, and when I looked up it was already dark. I tighten my muffler around my neck and turn toward home, glad to have the wind at my back.

How interesting that I end my year on this beach collecting shell halves—solitary survivors of bivalve beginnings. Alone, but not incomplete, they retain an enduring beauty.

I, too, am alone but not incomplete.

It’s rare to find an intact bivalve on the beach, because the hinge that holds them together—whether clam, scallop, mussel or oyster—is always soft, flexible flesh. Susceptible to tearing and rupture, as if the two halves were never destined to live out their lives together. Of course, some would say the shells died when the creature that created them ceased to be. But to me, the shells are still very much alive, and will go on surviving long after I’ve blended my bones back into the earth. Sure, the more fragile jingle shells will be ground into sand by steady tides. But the rock scallop shell—already old for its kind—must be hearty enough to persist at least a century or so.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• Can you see yourself as a vessel?
• What would you like to hold?
• Is your vessel large enough to contain all the goodness the Universe wants to give you?
• Have you found a vessel in nature that you could use as a meditation focal object?

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