my latest passion

Okay, it's not exactly a passion. Substitute for passion "the real reason I never get anything done." Anyway, I'm talking about tides.

Though I was raised at the Joy Sea Shore, not more than a half-mile from the ocean and one half-block from the Shark River (which is actually a bay), and even though we were students of the tides (because we fished and clammed and dragged rowboats to the river), for most of my adult life I haven't paid attention to the tides. That's easily explained by the fact that the part of the Delaware River I lived near was beyond the tides, and because Lake Michigan didn't qualify as tidal, either.

But here I am now in a waterfront community, on a peninsula sticking out into the Admiralty Inlet, connected to a larger peninsula that sticks out into the waters of the Pacific Ocean, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Puget Sound. Everywhere I look there is water. And every day, almost without fail, I'm walking the tideline, whatever it is.

It took a year, but it finally came to my attention that all tides are not equal, at least for part of the month. Take today's tide, for instance. Note that the difference between this morning's low tide (1 a.m.) and this morning's high tide (5 a.m.) is about six inches, and is separated by only 4 hours. But the difference between the morning's low and the mid-day low is 10 feet. Such tides occur just after the full and new moons, and during the daylight hours except in winter, from what I can tell.

These low tides stop the ferries. They also expose a rich variety of tidal life, and it's not possible to walk near the lagoon inlet, at the waterline, without stepping on hundreds of thousands of living sand dollars, which are both at risk and patiently waiting for the water to return.

Anyway, it puts me in mind of the fact that we live on a little spherical blob of celestial aggregate, which is speeding around a huge spherical ball of celestial fire, and we're all the while being circled by a cold and lonesome chunk of celestial blue cheese. Thinking about this makes me understand completely how we are just a part of the web of existence. I suppose it could make me feel puny and insignificant, but instead I am coming to understand how wonderful, how grand, and how absolutely incredibly divine this perfection is, and that I'm a part of it. And it makes me wonder why I ever ask for more.