Life on the Edge

The water is crackling like a soft fire.

Or maybe the lively sound is coming from the hundreds of thousands of buckshot barnacles, their movement hidden from view.

Squatting low, the sun hot on my back, I listen closely to life on the edge of the ocean. Purple tufts have super-glued themselves to rocks beneath the water’s surface. I have no idea whether they’re sea anemones, sea urchins, or sea plants, and at moments like these I feel amazed and clueless. All those years in the classroom, all those nights at the library, all those textbook assignments, pop quizzes, and essays, yet I can’t even name the animals in a California tide pool. What have I spent my life learning?

I breathe in salty air, the smell of old-aged mussels. I’ve been squatting here all morning because I’ve fallen in love with this place. Straightening my sore legs, I turn to shore. There are six or seven artists each with an easel and canvas, trying to capture with paints what I will later try to capture with words. I shift positions and squat again.

A pile of bright orange spaghetti noodles squish together and then extend outwards moving among the purple tufts. It takes a moment but I finally recognize the orange spaghetti – it’s a sea star. It’s smaller, skinner, and hairier than I imagined, but I love that I’m hanging out with a wild sea star. Any given Friday a year ago, I’d be in a corporate office missing out.

As I continue to admire this ecosystem, a word floats to mind: survival. Life is tough here; the tide pool’s peaceful look is deceptive. The burning sun – if it dries up the water – will scorch what lies beneath. The wind pitches waves over the rocks, threatening to knock animals off balance. The snails and hermit crabs scrounge for food but the little guys must be stressed, preoccupied with lugging around their heavy shells to disguise themselves from others who see them as bait. Even I’m a threat – I could crush the barnacles and mollusks with my shoe if I’m not careful where I step.

Later that afternoon, in a hotel room, I miss the tide pool. My husband is here in Laguna Niguel on business and I had decided to come along for the ride, to take a few days off. Pretty soon the well-trained side of my personality – the side that says I’m not worthy unless I’m producing and achieving and accomplishing – barked me back inside, back to work.

In my former legal career I’d burned myself out. Now as a freelance writer, finding balance can be even more difficult. Because I operate out of our home, my work life and personal life are indistinguishably blurred as one. Even so, I don’t want to make the same mistakes.

So back outside I go.

When I return to the tide pool a woman in a hat kneels by my side.

“It’s nice to see so much life,” she says. “For once there’s so much life.”

It’s true. Here, teetering on the edge of the ocean, life is crawling and swimming and floating and scampering and swirling. Everywhere. And it dawns on me – survival will only continue if balance is maintained. A thorough and delicate balance.

Now there’s a lesson I never learned in any textbook.