Tides

I live on a 5-acre island that two millennia ago was part of a thriving coral reef. When the giant Ice Age glaciers came along and sucked up the sea, the coral bleached and dried out and became a harsh, hardy chain of karst and marl outcroppings. We have tried over the years to tame them with grass and asphalt, but the fossils on their rocky coastlines remain to tell their story.

Today, upwards of 70 percent of the Earth is covered by saltwater. The fact that we are small, outnumbered, surrounded on all sides by the sea is an easy thing for most to forget. We insulate ourselves with smooth highways and backyard pools and tinted windows and lose sight of the ocean, except on those fleeting, glimmering weeks of summer spent by the shore.

I used to pride myself on my knack for geography but disregarded two-thirds of the globe. Now, no matter how hard I try, I can never be more than five hundred and twenty-two feet from the sea. I watch it constantly. I see the tide surge in and the ferryboat go out and the way that turquoise darkens to navy beneath a cloud that rushes my way. I find nurse sharks resting along the bottom and bioluminescent worms travelling in groups beneath the waxing moon and all forms of life and death in between.

The thing I like best about the island is its sudden changeability. Without warning, a storm front will cover the sun and the ospreys will launch into the air, sleek whirlpools of feathers and grace. Currents reverse their paths in an instant, reminding me that I am - and always will be - at their mercy. Crabs creep out of their sandy dens and interrupt my trudge to the showers, absorbed in their own minute dramas as they scuttle across the spiny ground.

Modern city life is soft and constant. We head outside on lunch breaks and weekends and feel the seasons change superficially. But here, I remain inside only to sleep. My skin is changing, weathering. My feet are calloused and I have new muscles in my back. If the wind is too strong, I can’t get off the island. If it’s raining, I get wet. It’s the same slow humbling process that I recognize when I guide trips in the backcountry: the realization that we are immeasurably insignificant. We like to pretend to hold the reins when really we are just along for the ride.

The foamy waves that fill the tidepools and the palms that flutter and bend in the breeze have been doing so for much longer than I have been here, and will continue to do so after I leave. To know this is both lonely and comforting. I am nothing but an observer, a listener, a sponge. I am but a guest on this island and on this planet, and I will not overstay my welcome.

Pictured: my coworker Carson searching for needlefish.