Beyond This Shore Joseph Hedger
W
hat are you really looking for? At my old home, there was a jetty that reached into the Atlantic Ocean from a wide, sandy beach. The water was usually cold and clear to the bottom, and sometimes dark clouds covered the horizon with shades of rain and shifts of lightning. I went during such a storm and crept along the seaweed while waves crashed against the rocky side and blanketed it in salt water. I crouched low at the end of the jetty and wind blew soft rain against my already soaked body. The mainland seemed far behind me as I stared out eastward. In this place, I saw manta rays as big as my bed, and I swam through the attached reef where lionfish corrupt the sandy floor and small squid dash through the water like arrows. I watched dolphins ride the surf into the shallow end by the beach, and I swam with a manatee in its search for warm water and vegetation. Flying fish scattered like skipping stones and jellyfish loomed, their cloud bodies floating gentle and dangerous. I’ve encountered life and mystery and been almost drowned and have almost won. By the jetty in that afternoon storm, I was cold in the humid wind. Whenever I felt dead, the world around me— the bubbling earth—came to life in beautiful reminiscence. As all storms do, it passed quickly, and the wet sand remained with sweet pungent sargassum, and I remained half-submerged between vast ocean and shore. One cannot exist forever in timeless afternoons, I thought, and I dove into the water. Now this place exists beyond me, further in time
Spring 2017
and space than it’s ever been before. My Wordsworthian memory is broken. There are solutions beyond me that I briefly forget. There are places that I would like to exist forever. But buildings are torn down and trees are dug up; the world’s memory is solid, but it forgets too, sometimes. In the city, buildings wall the earth away from me, and fresh air is a commodity; open water is a mythology. The enemy has a name, and it is Death. But these shores have outlived civilizations. Maybe not these shores exactly, but their water has rinsed the world in moonrise tides since creation’s second day. It is like a handwritten “made by” Creator’s note or a magnet compass, drowning Death in gentle and ferocious ocean sways. What are you really looking for? I was asked on the jetty. And I answered that I don’t know—but somewhere, deep down, I really do.
Creative Essay 9
