The sun rises red on the horizon again. She sits in the water, staring at the sky as it sprinkles purples and blues on the day’s beginning. Her feet are cold, tingling through to her toes. She looks down at her body draped in black, the rings of her curls drip salt, landing on her arms and thighs to soak into the ocean again.
The wet and jagged brown cliffs stand to her right. The ocean swells move her back, rocking her side to side. She places her hands gently along her thighs, her knees open along the blue surfboard underneath her. Waiting in anticipation for the next set of watery hills to spill toward the shoreline, she squeezes her hips in and locks her left foot around her right ankle under her board, playing with the balance of the ebbs and flows of the tide.
Content with the slowness of the morning, she exhales and listens to the water move around her, to the slow life awakening in the light. Harbor seals bark under the wharf, tired from an evening swim. They are eager to use the last bits of their energy to jump up on the beams to dry out and sleep. Seagulls and cormorants fly overhead, circling like spirals before gliding onto branches of cypress trees that hang over the cliff edges. The cormorants have made homes above the tide line, among the juts and cracks of the rock, small black holes dotting the walls.
She turns her face back to the red sun, a fiery orange hue outlining its circumference. A small knot has been stuck in the middle of her throat for days. She coughs, attempting to move the nodule, gulping the gripping ball up and down. Dry and raspy, she recalls the clear glass of water she drank this morning before locking up her house. She opens her mouth and coughs, the rough ball gripping her throat. A bit salty along her tongue, the ocean water from her nose fills her head and slips down along the node. The gentle roar of the waves come and she lies down. She paddles over them toward the bobbing sun in the distance where shattered light pushes against the haze.
Then a voice trails in from a distance: “It’s the fires in the valley up north, I think they said it’s some ten thousand acres already and it jumped the line.”
Still images of houses and trees black against a bright red background flash in her mind. Three small clearing coughs dislodge the knot rom her throat and she breathes deep into her lungs. Th rumble of her deep breath syncs with the roar of the waves. Her chest expands underneath her wetsuit. The tightness, this heaviness, weighs her down. The clouds in the far distance turn from clear blue and light purple to an orange brown burnt hue, fading out into the sea.
The ocean calm fades from her face. She turns away from the sun and looks straight out along the open ocean in front of her. The small liquid hills build one after another and she extends one arm in front of another, paddling out. She cranes her head up as they start to foam white along their lips. She digs further down into the water, pushing up and holding her breath, floating over the surface.
Each wave stirs up the darkness from the floor of the ocean and her mind. The fires burning down the centuries old redwoods, the black ash from the runoff whirling around her board. Windstorms knocking the Midwest into more of a flatland than it already is, corn crops and single-story farmhouses gone. And the French Quarter, once again, filling with the Gulf’s waters. Salt spills into burial grounds. The mausoleums, their limestone coverings unhinged, are eroding away with all that was sacred.
The waves keep rolling in. Hard to breathe with the smoke, though it is much harder to breathe as she swallows her thoughts and judgments. Her mind wages a war between catching the waves and drowning in the death of everything around her. She continues to paddle until the set subsides, the ocean in front of her rippling only with the wind, the current moving out from the shore and the cliffs.
Why did she paddle out today in the thick of this smoke? In the thick of her mind?
She pushes herself up and exhales, squeezing her fingers down into the palms of her hands, waiting for an answer to come to her. She licks the ocean from her lips, the breeze texturing the surface of the ocean out toward the horizon. The sound of the whitewater rumbling over itself fills her ears and she closes her eyes. All of this was solely for her—each dig into the water beneath her, each push of her chest off the water, every step she took up and down her board. This is her ceremony devoted to herself.
The breeze tickles her skin while the red sun rises higher into the sky. She coughs, looking around at all the other bodies floating, waiting for the ocean to speak. All eyes are turned out into the distance, past the glare and toward the horizon. The water reflects the haze around them, only picking up the dark blue tinges where the sky falls into the distance.
The surface of the ocean begins to move toward her once more. She lies back down against the flat of her board, pressing her mouth to the wax and glass. She pulls her hands down and back, pulling herself out past the point where the lumps form and prop themselves up with waiting, hungry mouths. She lets all of the waves roll past her, roll under her, placing her ear to the side of her board, listening to the swirl of the ocean. She closes her mouth, the cold kisses of the water lapping against the side of her face. Still the smoke swirls around her. The now gray-brown colors of the sky settle against the distant mountains. The heavy lump in her throat back again, she swallows once more, scratching stagnant air causing an itch with each gulp.
She pushes her nose and forehead into the board, beads of transparent water housing tiny black ash particles within them. She wipes them back into the surface and bites her lip, frustrated. She sits back up and looks behind her toward the beach. Bodies like morning flowers are standing, opening up, the dark water turning white, collecting along their ankles. They duck and bend, dancing along the shapeshifting water. Among the roars of waves there are whistles and yips bouncing off the cliffs, people pulling themselves back out from shore.
The fires sparked weeks ago and still, there is no end in sight. Each day she turned on the news, listening to some broadcaster thousands of miles away recite numbers of burnt acreage while photos flashed across the screen. She would look out at the scarred dawn through the slats of her blinds every morning, cut off from the air outside. The sun burned its orange outline into the brown veil between her and the clear blue sky of her memories; the one she knew was hidden behind the raw backdrop of her reality.
She would tense up in those smoldering sunrises. Gazing out into the apocalyptic landscape, she would let out a cough. Each muscle tightened between her ribs, small spasms jittered along the back of her neck. She was the type of person to pick up trash on the street. The type of person to choose bars of soap over plastic bottles. Since all of this began, she had been overly cautious, as if turning off the tap between each dirty dish could somehow contribute more water to fight fires. She though turning off a lamp could potentially leave more energy for those in need, evacuated from their homes in the blazes surrounding them.
It was too much to watch the world burn from her kitchen window. The wrens weren’t singing, just the lonely crow barking into the day from the telephone wire. The news in the background reminded her to stay inside, the air quality not healthy for long durations. But she couldn’t stay in. She entered the cold water to remind herself about her existence, about her humanness.
Without dry land under her feet, she floats, taking up space. Drifting, listening to the seals bark, everything feels normal behind closed eyes. She swirls her feet around the long stems of kelp that sway in the ebbs. She looks toward the cliff, the cormorants’ long, shiny black bodies silhouetted as they attempt to soak in sun, preening each other in their nests. She looks around the corner, up the coast as white walled waves tumble and roll against the dark, eroding rocks and faces of the cliff. She exhales and paddles a few strokes out, looking for the swell to poke up from the surface once more.
The long surface rolls from across the horizon. The water bites her hands and she turns around, the wall of water slides in its mesmerizing dance. She positions her body toward the sands behind her, pulling her arms down twice more until she is caught by the energy, pushing herself up like a sphinx. She stands, crouching low. Other bodies pass behind her, paddling toward where she came. She sips in air, feeling her cheeks pinching, the corners of her lips tilting upwards. She looks down, sands in the shallow appearing under her board. She bends her knees and turns out, lowering herself once more against the bumpy surface of her board.
From deep within she exhales, her whole body sighing relief. She digs into the water, droplets splashing along her sides. She moves slowly back out toward the cliff’s edge. At first she digs hard and then slows down. This is her control. This is where her power lies. If she could, she would blow away the brown blanket covering her community. She would give every ounce of water inside her body to put out the forest fires. She would open her home up to those without.
She floats, the waves moving underneath her with each paddle back out into the open sea. Laughter echoes across the water toward her. A mother and her young son are playing in the waves, a gaping smile stretched along his face.
“I caught that one, didn’t you see,” he states loudly. She nods, dimples appearing next to her parted mouth. The mother makes eye contact with the young woman, nodding back, turning her head again to the horizon.
The gentle roar of the white breaks circle her, the water tingling her arms with each stroke. She arrives where the cliff turns and sits back up. Placing her hands on her thighs once more, she closes her eyes. She dips her hands back into the water, circling her fingers in the cold. She opens her eyes and looks around, still bodies sit upright, floating in silence against the blackness of the rock behind them. She slips off her board and submerges in the water beneath her.
She dips her head, the pressure gathering around her legs and arms, feeling the hug and the weightlessness. The sound swirls inside her, her heartbeat thumping against her chest, the ocean wrapping around her.
This is where she goes. This is where the groundlessness meets the grounding within her. The instability, the changing tides, the falling down — all of it brings her back into her body, feeling with all of her senses. For a few brief moments, the water holds her close, her thoughts float away, the fires dampen, and the smoke clears.
She kicks once, emerging through to the surface. Opening her eyes, the bodies remain still, some looking out into the distance, others looking up at the sky. They are silent, blanketed by the haze and the red sun. She pulls herself back up onto her board, her hair dripping, salt coating her lips.
As if at once, the bodies lay down against their boards, paddling out against the moving waters. She turns herself toward shore, digging her hands one, two, three, four times down and back. The speed takes her, she stands and moves her hips toward the left and then the right, gliding with the face of the wave rolling alongside her, pushing her in.
The shore nears and she lowers herself, sliding down and then into the water. She steps along the sand, placing one hand on her board while turning back again out to sea. She closes her eyes for only a moment while words echo and the water washes over the rocks along the coast. Her body vibrates, standing on the earth. She picks up her board and heads up into the day, sturdy on her feet.