One breath, one ocean.
There’s always a moment when we want to stay curled up forever. But then we remember we can float.
Thank you, ocean, for the gift of life. I emerge from the waters below and feel sunlight on my face.
There’s always a moment when we want to stay curled up forever. But then we remember we can float.
Thank you, ocean, for the gift of life. I emerge from the waters below and feel sunlight on my face.
The ocean is also the sky. The sky is also the ocean. In it, I am connected to all. Moved by wind.
Midway through our 29-day journey, Anna Kraulis and I are feeling a heart-full of gratitude for the magnificent ocean and the wild salmon whose lives depend on it. Salmon, I am learning, are great teachers of inner knowing. Again and again I marvel at their ability to seemingly just know what to do. To break out of the egg, to swim for air just after nightfall when predators lay low, to all-of-a sudden begin that long and arduous trek out to open water, and then after many years out there, to find their way back and offer their bones to the place that made them. Though I will never be a fish, perhaps I can also benefit from the ocean’s mysterious ways. Is there something in the ocean itself that give salmon the power and trust to find their way in life?
I attempt to hold myself down, fighting against ocean’s salty buoyancy. Taking a big gulp of oxygen to sink down again into the abyss.
Like an egg I nest in the gravel bed. Shivering I try and make a home. I think of mother.
I carry all of my nutrients in my belly. I wait for darkness. I pretend I am human.
Through these dips I sometimes come into contact with such a vastness and power that I feel fear. Learning to trust the ocean, to let myself surrender to her ways, is a life’s work But perhaps part of the learning is about the wisdom in wildness. It takes time to develop this inner knowing. It has taken lifetimes for the salmon to achieve this level of artistry in life. Their wisdom has developed in direct relation to their life cycle. This too is a great teacher.
The ocean surrounds us here on the west coast. How often have we listened to her call? How do we learn the lessons she is offering us?
Go beneath the waves, and the city vanishes. Close your eyes and the space between us dissappears- one breath, one ocean.
This project was inspired by the #GoWildforSalmon challenge, and the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw occupation to protect their unceded territory from open-net fish farms. If you’d like to learn more about their work to protect endangered wild salmon, visit https://cleansingourwate
Many thanks to the Vines Festival for supporting our project.
To read more:
Insta: @58oceansproject
Fb: 58 Oceans Project
Fb: 58 Oceans Project
