minus tide, mountain high and emerson

A few weeks ago, I heard a piece on public radio about Midwest poets. There was a Louisa May Alcott poem featured, which of course reminded me of how much I loved Little Women when I was younger. This fired me up to read more of her work, and by and by got me exploring more of the American transcendentalists. Maybe it’s something about this time of year, being aware of nature fluxing and awakening, but I am finding all of this reading very connective and restoring.  And once again, drawing similarities about the way my body and soul mimics the seasons in Alaska. My jumbled up words could never say it more eloquently than Emerson:

The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and, after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. Every day, men and women, conversing, beholding and beholden. The scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle most engages. He must settle its value in his mind. What is nature to him? There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself. Therein it resembles his own spirit, whose beginning, whose ending, he never can find, — so entire, so boundless. Far, too, as her splendors shine, system on system shooting like rays, upward, downward, without centre, without circumference, — in the mass and in the particle, nature hastens to render account of herself to the mind.

- “The American Scholar” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

We didn’t get to see the Super Moon because it’s been raining buckets for days now (and cold as heck).  My sister asked how I can stand the rain, and I say I accept it because it gives me what I love about this place. Does it suck big time? Um, yes. I hate it today and I’m a little worried that the sun won’t grace us at all this summer. I digress. That unseen moon did give us the benefit of some great low tides.

We’re pretty lucky to have beach access so close to home. I was able to escape before everyone woke up and go for a nice, long Sunday morning walk.

It never struck me how feminine sea anemones are. 

I’ve never seen a survivor with only two legs. Amazing that he’ll be whole again someday.

A chiton in a sea of baby barnacles

I’ve never been so muddy on a walk all by myself.

After all the great sea level exploring, Jonah, Allison and I went up East Glacier Trail. A wet, wet hike but well worth the high. And I think Jonah knows how I feel, despite being just nine.