Calling All Mermaids

The mermaid stone hasn’t seen much action these days.  With surfers riding the waves in recent years and more dogs running along the beaches, it’s no wonder that mermaids are going elsewhere to gather their thoughts at dawn and dusk.

 I, for one, would love to catch a glimpse of a siren arranging her hair while singing a haunting melody.  Even one of the mermaids’ legged cousins, the sea nymphs, would be a delight to find strolling along our shores, gathering shells.

Sadly, rockweed is all that’s covering the mermaid stone these days.

 Maybe it’s all the garbage that’s dumped near our shores that’s putting them off.  Or perhaps they don’t bother visiting Cow Bay because there are fewer and fewer shells to find here.  The ones that do wash up on our beaches are quickly gathered by tourists and local beachcombers like me.

Sea Nymph by William Symonds 1893

 We don’t pause to consider that seashells and sea glass are the only adornments mermaids and sea nymphs have available to them when the seaside flowers aren’t in bloom. 

There are probably uninhabited islands not far from here where mermaids don’t have to compete with anyone for the treasures that wash ashore.  Seals are likely less intimidating than dogs from their point of view as well. 

I’m going to start leaving the seashells where I find them on the shore instead of taking them home.   If I take anything back from the beach, it will be the garbage I find there.  It’s not much, but it’s a first step in attracting these wondrous creatures back to our shores. 

I must be a mermaid… I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.
― Anaïs Nin (1903-1977)

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Love, Stones and Symmetry

Finding the ideal love is like trying to find a perfectly symmetrical stone on the beach.  It’s not easy.  Even with so many possibilities, the task is more difficult than one would imagine.  And the longer you look, the slimmer the odds of finding that perfect specimen may seem.  Though some might appear somewhat perfect at a distance, upon closer inspection, it soon becomes apparent that they are not quite so.

That’s not to say that it’s downright impossible to find perfect specimens. They are indeed out there, but be forewarned that many years may pass between one discovery and the next.

Whether or not we realize it, we also search for physical symmetry in other human beings. Characteristic of good genes and general good health in nature, perfect symmetry in a mate would likely increase one’s chances of creating healthy offspring.  No wonder we’re so drawn to people with beautifully symmetrical faces.

And yet, there is a certain charm and character attributable to the not-so-symmetrical. With perhaps an even stronger  magnetism, especially where romantic love is concerned, we are drawn towards the imperfect.  Why? One theory suggests that while our minds are pleasantly calmed by symmetry, they also quickly become bored with it.  Intrigued by complexity, when faced with marginally flawed symmetry, our minds are perked and subconsciously go to work to try and figure out what’s causing the disparity.

Although the human body is symmetrical in so many ways, the shape of the human heart is not.   Could that be a clue that perfection in matters of the heart was created to be elusive?   If we are to achieve any semblance of perfection in love, like the rare round stones found sometimes on the beach, it’s only due to years of surviving the pounding waves and stormy seas.  Now there’s something to ponder as we approach Valentine’s Day.

Text and images copyright Amy-Lynn Bell 2012

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Summer Mandalas

Take a few minutes from your summer and make a mandala from natural materials.   Mandalas are an excellent exercise to help you focus on the moment at hand.  You may create something beautiful in the process but don’t worry about perfection.  

Depending on your intention while creating your mandala, you may construct  a sacred space in which to bring your thoughts and prayers.

Summer offers a variety of materials:  leaves, flowers, twigs and grasses.  Your palette of living colors will depend on what’s in bloom in your corner of the world right now.  Found feathers, seashells and stones may also be used.  The possibilities are endless.

You can create one by yourself, with a friend or with a child. 

Create a circular shape with your materials.  You can plan to have a set number of sections in your design or just see what happens. 

You can make your mandalas outdoors or inside.  It doesn’t matter if you keep your arrangement forever, for a day, or just a few minutes.  Mandalas are about here and now.

For more information about mandalas, see my previous post on Autumn Mandalas.

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Finding Yourself in the Sea

It’s always a good time to go down to the ocean and see what you can find.  Ice and wind only make the rocks look more interesting.

Even if it’s raining, the walk down to the sea is always worthwhile because you never know what treasures are waiting to be discovered on the shore.  You don’t have to pick them up to enjoy them.  Just leave them where you find them for others to discover too.

Unless you find a stranded starfish of course.  It’s always good to pick them up and throw them back in the water.

There are so many stones, worn down and rounded by years of pounding surf.  Do we humans inevitably become like this too?  Worn down and rounded by years of worldly concerns pounding on our fragile bodies?  Look at that white stone among all the grey ones.  I wonder how it got in with the others…

The best trips to the shore are often ones when I can come ‘home with a smooth round stone as small as a world and as large as alone.’  What do you find when you visit the shore?

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea
~ ee cummings

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Autumn Mandalas

Through the ages, mandalas have been employed by Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Native people the world over to create sacred spaces and focal points for prayer and meditation.

Often painted, they may also be made of stone, colored sand or stained glass, such as in the rose windows found in Gothic cathedrals. Some, like Tibetan sand mandalas, possess an impermanent quality, as their deconstruction is also part of the ritual surrounding their creation.  Mandalas might be intended as representations of the universe, the unconscious self or the relationship between the inner and outer realms. 

Mine are simple creations made with natural materials found in my yard:  leaves, flowers, twigs and tree cones.  The first mandala shown at the top of this post was made from the colorful leaves of a sugar maple and a yellow birch.  The second was created on my gravel driveway from sea smoothed stones gathered near the ocean.

This peony leaf mandala also includes fern leaves, purple asters and two-flowered Cynthia blooms.  A curled up wooly bear caterpillar is at its centre.

Above, heal-all flowers have been arranged with balsam fir cones around a mushroom centre.  The creation of each mandala gave me an opportunity to reflect on autumn’s beautiful colours and textures.  I’m thankful to live in a place where nature’s palette is ever changing and fresh.   

My mandalas will slowly fall apart, be moved by the winds or wild creatures, decay and return to the earth.  Their ephemeral quality only serves to enhance their present beauty.

Have you ever considered using natural materials to create a mandala outdoors?

 

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Love at the Beach

Looking for heart-shaped stones on the beach is something I’d never thought of doing until recently.  Many people have collections of these.  Who would have thought anyone would consider a ‘heart of stone’ something worth searching for?

Beaches are favorite places for couples to visit.  They take long walks along the shoreline at sunset, or sit on the beach together, gazing out at the horizon while sharing their dreams of the future.   Nearby Rainbow Haven Beach attracts numerous singles seeking summer romance .  Glowing with suntan lotion, they bask in the sun while non-chalantly checking one another out from behind their fashionable sunglasses.

The shore and its pounding waves are sometimes employed by poets as a metaphor for the coming together of lovers.  One waits patiently for the other to arrive at long last from afar.

But what happens when love dies and couples who walked together so often hand in hand along the sand must now walk alone?  If love can begin at the beach, could it not end there as well?

This week I found not only one, but several yellow long-stemmed roses tangled in the seaweed on the shore.  Although they were a bit frazzled by the elements, they still looked fairly fresh.

In the language of flowers, yellow roses symbolize the end of a love affair.  Could someone have been given a bouquet of yellow roses at the beach?  And could these have then been abandoned on the shore or thrown into the sea?  We’ll never know.

Strange how my heart beats
To find myself upon your shore.
Strange how I still feel
My loss of comfort gone before.
Cool waves wash over
And drift away with dreams of youth.
So time is stolen
I cannot hold you long enough.

~ Enya

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Where Mermaids Arrange their Hair

This large, smooth stone near Rainbow Haven Beach is where mermaids sit at dusk and at dawn. And what do they do there at the rising and setting of the sun?  They arrange flowers in their hair… flowers they’ve found on the beach, growing just at the edge of the high tide line.

These pink-lavender Beach Peas  have tendrils that can easily be twirled and fixed into long mermaid hair.  Land dwellers may have the wind to be concerned about, but mermaids also have to worry about the currents messing with their hair.  It’s not easy to find ornaments that stay in place.

Can’t you just see a pretty mermaid placing one of these pink and white Morning Glories  above one of her ears as she sits on the stone at dawn.  These wild blooms are colorful enough to look striking both above and under the water.

Jacques Cousteau believed that Manatees were what sailors really saw when they thought they were seeing mermaids.  It’s sad that scientists often try to make up in research for what they sometimes lack in imagination.

There are thousands of stones on shores around the world, where mermaids fix their hair and look out to sea as they plan or reflect on the day.  Perhaps there’s one such stone near you.

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Searching for Nests at Silver Sands

Undaunted by the threat of rain, I thought I’d trek out to Silver Sands Beach last Friday in search of seagulls’ nests.  I had seen an enormous flock of seagulls there last year, and figured they might be nesting there as well.  Inspired by some beautiful photos of gulls’ nests taken by Anne at Nova Scotia Island Journal, I set out. 

Five minutes into my trek , I stumbled across this large carcass of a seagull. I had just made a large painting of a gull’s head last month and recognized it immediately as a Herring Gull by the red markings on its mouth.   Although I love to collect feathers that I find while walking in the woods or on the beach, it somehow didn’t seem right to pick some feathers off the remains of this large, beautiful bird. So after taking a photograph, I set out again in search of the nests.

Silver Sands gets its name from the sparkling sand that used to cover its beach.  This sand was taken away decades ago by trucks for use in the city.  Now all that remains are stones and short pockets of sand here and there at low tide.  There are mud flats and grasses in a marsh behind the shore.  This is where I caught sight of a very large white bird.  Its elongated neck and long legs reminded me of the many Great Blue Herons I’ve seen at Rainbow Haven Beach and along the Salt Marsh Trail.  My best guess is that it was a White Egret. It flew off as I approached,  and in its flight looked very much like the herons. 

Sandpipers could be seen along the water’s edge on both the ocean side and the marsh side of the beach.  They called to one another continually, probably to let one another know of this large intruder in their midst.  This is the only place where I’ve been able to see Piping Plovers in the past.  They probably make nests here too.  I looked around the grasses but was reluctant to disturb anything or give any of these dear little birds cause for concern, so I moved on.  It wasn’t long afterwards that I was able to spot some rather unusual looking eggs …

… probably because I had walked so far along the beach that I was almost at Hartlen’s Point where the golf course is located.  Still not having seen any nests or real eggs, I decided to head back.  Maybe I’d find them on another walk, on another day… 

Seeing the large white bird had made the long walk worthwhile.  Walking home along the beach, I could see Flandrum Hill in the distance.

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Turning Over Stones

Turning over rocks and stones to see what’s living beneath them is a great outdoor activity to get children interested in nature.  Salamanders, ants, spiders, worms and slugs all like to snuggle down beneath stones.  Though each overturning will produce fairly similar results, once they start, children likely won’t be satisfied until they’ve overturned every stone in sight.

During one such session with my grandson last week, I was amazed at the large number of ant tunnels and ants to be found beneath the stones.  Their numbers seem far greater than they used to be.  Good thing there are lots of birds here too.  This spring I’ve already seen flickers and woodpeckers digging for ants in the lawn and woods.   Besides eating great amounts of these insects, flickers are known to keep feather parasites in check by preening themselves with crushed ants.

Salamanders found under stone in mint bed

Frogs and toads also eat their fair share of ants.  Homes can easily be made for these creatures among the stones.  Reptiles also like to dwell beneath stones.  According to my sons, snakes have frequently been found under the rocks at the end of the driveway near the ditch.

One evening years ago, I was startled to see flashlights suddenly brightening the living room window.  As I opened the door, I was relieved to see that it was only our friendly neighbors turning over stones along the flower bed in search of bait for the next morning’s fishing trip.   Besides humans, raccoons are other omnivores that are known to turn over stones in search of hidden treasure, especially in streams.

If you do turn over stones, be sure to put them back in the same place afterwards.  Children will quickly learn to do this if you make it a pre-requisite to turning over the next stone.

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Searching for Meanings at the Beach

Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war… Mostly the animals understand their roles, but man, by comparison, seems troubled by a message that, it is often said, he cannot quite remember or has gotten wrong… Bereft of instinct, he must search continually for meanings… Man was a reader before he became a writer, a reader of what Coleridge once called the mighty alphabet of the universe.
~ from The Unexpected Universe by Loren Eiseley

 

Rainbow Haven at Low Tide

Despite differences in sand colour and texture, the presence of pebbles, stones or rocks, all of the earth’s beaches have a similar effect on humans.  Times converge where water meets the shore.  These are places where long buried ideas and memories are dug up and future dreams loom on the horizon.  

Even people unaccustomed to spending time in nature warm quickly to the outdoor experience offered by the shore. Whether the day is bright and sunny or misty and overcast, a walk along the beach puts one into a detached frame of mind that is above and beyond the day’s weather forecast. 

Some days we might look at what’s drifted ashore with the tide or pick up a shell to examine more closely.  Tidepools are full of interesting creatures.  The Blue Mussel bed at Rainbow Haven beach is always a great place to find rock crabs, whelks, starfish and moon shells at low tide.   Much in nature (and life) can be taken for granted unless we patiently give it a more careful look.   

On other days we might look out at the seascape that encompasses the shore, sea and sky.  When searching for new meanings to life’s events and purposes it’s often helpful to step back from the details and take a good, long look at the big picture.  Few experiences put a sparkle on the day as much as witnessing a sunrise or sunset at the beach. 

Each stage of life seems to present us with a quest for new meanings and purposes.  Though these may be hard sought and won, they can also easily be washed away by the tides of time.   It’s best to not leave too much space in between visits to the shore. 

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Sea Stones

Makka Pakka’s frequent cleaning of stones on the BBC’s In the Night Garden… was inspiration for this morning’s scrubbing of stones by my grandson at the kitchen sink.  There are a couple of clay pots near my front door, filled with sea smoothed stones picked at nearby beaches.  He carefully cleaned every one.

Makka Pakka likes to stack the stones in piles of three or more.  We did that too.  Stacking stones has been done by the Earth’s peoples since the days of Stonehenge and likely long before then too.  The Inuit still stack stones into Inukshuks:  Piles that mark a stash or simply say ‘we were here.’  My sons built a large one in our front yard years ago.  It was taken down once we realized it would be a hazard for young children tempted to take a closer look. 

Collecting stones on the beach is also an age old activity.  My ongoing quest is to find ones that are as rounded as possible.  I’ve only ever found a few.  It’s not easy.   Other nice finds are stones that conform perfectly to the contours of one’s closed hand.  I also have a few small white stones that I keep with my seashell collection.  In the sunshine, their luminescence reminds me of the sparkling seashore.

Once you pick up a stone, unless you’re going to skip it across the water, it inevitably is brought back home where you eventually have to decide what to do with it.  My friend Sylvia has placed her collection of stones in a circle on her front deck while  Marsha holds hers in a dish on her coffee table.  There’s a reason why mine are placed in pots near the front door.  

There are two pots:  one for incoming and one for outgoing.  Often, before I set off on a walk to the beach, I’ll take a stone with me to drop off there.  It’s not just my quirky way of ‘giving back to the sea.’  This action lets me pare down my collection by discarding just one at a time.  Ideally, one of these days, there will only be one stone in the incoming pot, with the outgoing pot empty.

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