Living By the Tides, Patterns, Rhythms, Present Tense

Living by the Tides . . . Patterns, Rhythms, Present Tense 

Each chapter of our lives has a rhythmic formula underlying out of which longer passages are developed. Finding peace and pace with these natural rhythms, the tides, within and without, is where we grow our edges into a sense of confident efficacy ,within the sea and seasons of our lives. 

On the flanks of the Olympic Mountains and bordering the saltwater are the Grandmother and Grandfather Trees, millions of them, infusing the oxygen-rich air with their exhale. Elders in their own right, their toes are in the soil of mountains that are teenagers: the Red Rocks of Sedona, AZ --buttes, pillars and mesas--the erosional remains of the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau range in age from 300 to 340 million years ago--the plateau itself, out of which the Grand Canyon is carved, 6 million years old, then this compared to Mingus Mountain,  across the Verde Valley, erupting under the sea, when  what we now know as Sedona, was at the "South Pole, 1.8 billion years ago. So, on that scale, the Olympic Mountains are teenagers, the oldest rock material ranging between 55 to 65 million years ago--which compares to Sedona' youngest rock. These 'young' Olympic Mountains have their  feet in the Straight of Juan de Fuca.  

“Despite the sea being wild and the waves rolling away from the shore, the tide always returns.” 
― Katherine McIntyre, By the Sea

Anne Morrow-Lindbergh [Wikipedia] was an acclaimed author whose books and articles spanned the genres of poetry to nonfiction, touching upon topics as diverse as youth and age, love and marriage, peace, solitude and contentment, and the role of women in the 20th century.^[ Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea is an essay-style work, taking shells on the beach for inspiration , reflecting on the lives of American women.

She writes: 

“This is what one thirsts for, I realize, after the smallness of the day, of work, of details, of intimacy - even of communication, one thirsts for the magnitude and universality of a night full of stars, pouring into one like a fresh tide.” 

and:

“When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.”