Remembering: "Cries from the Deep" ~

Being born on the coast of the Pacific ocean and growing up playing in the sand, collecting sea shells, dried up starfish and beautiful sizes of blue and green colors of "ocean" glass; I immediately fell in love with this photo a friend sent me just a few days ago of a "shell offering" made by hands that love the ocean like I do.


It was quite natural to come home with a pail full of all of these beach treasures in my young years and fill my room with them.  I could hear and even smell the fragrance of the sea in that bedroom (unbeknown to me that some of the starfish I collected were still alive and as they died and dried in my room they gave off a very distinct odor).


Little ocean girl I was and find in my heart that I still am.  The sun worship and wave diving, the tiresome shell hunting, hermit crab chasing, sandcastle building, burying little brothers in the sand, clam digging, seaweed necklace making and the occasional burning of the bottom of my feet running in the hot sand; ouch, ouch, OUCH!  I have many memories of those innocent days when it seemed nothing could ever hurt the mighty ocean at my feet because it was so big and strong.


"Save the Whales" in the 1970s and the anticipation of watching the next television special of Jacques Cousteau and his "Calypso" the underground laboratory from which he brought us films of the ocean of which we had never seen before.  Then we marveled at hearing the whales "singing" to each other, the porpoises unable to be fooled when they followed his research vessel, the Élie Monier on his way to another filming destination as Cousteau changed course thinking that the porpoises would tag along when instead with their own brilliance they stayed on the "optimal" course knowing the best way to get to the desired location, in this case "The Straits of Gibraltar" without straying proving a phenomenon called "echolocation" or "sonar" which was a little known fact about sea marines at the time.


Jacques Cousteau so beautifully recorded decades ago in a film he made on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland called "Cries from the Deep", a film that brought us spectacular images of icebergs, whales and seals in the rich deep sea:

The sea and it's creatures are alive and smart and have vast lessons to teach us.  Whether it's the ocean, the rivers or the gulf we cannot allow these breathing living partners on our earth die because of our greed and what we perceive to be need for our own comfortable living lifestyles.  

I can only imagine the child, the little girl who cries at her Mommy to take her down to the beach so she can collect shells, starfish and make sand castles and not understanding that all of the beautiful sand she would walk through is now full of deadly, sticky, smothering oil and tar and that she would be harmed as are the all of the ocean animals and birds that we have taken for granted.


I don't want to end there with that picture of the tar and oiled beach.  Rather, I want to visualize the beauty of what our oceans offer us and the strength and power that we have to help heal them and do-no-harm.  First though we must admit what we have done to harm this beautiful nature and then work together to stop the holocaust.  In my daily life I must look around me at the reality of the things I own and things I continue to purchase that are made out of petroleum.  I must start with me and make the individual changes to discourage the selling of these products that will keep our great-granddaughters and great-grandsons from knowing the true beauty of the beaches and the oceans that I knew as a child.  


There are going to be many sacrifices that will be needed to stop the damage we have and are doing to our oceans.  I'm afraid that the human race as a whole is not ready yet or willing to make the deep cuts in lifestyle needed to about face on this planet and live with the planet and not against it.  I am beginning to believe it begins with "self".  If you take conscience steps to treat your own body with health and stop poisoning the surroundings we live in and how we use and dispose of the products needed daily to live, choosing only the minimum of those products so our waste is reduced.  


Here then we have a start in offering back to our natural Eco system what will keep it alive and thriving, waiting for that little girl way in the future to go build sand castles and collect shells meant for finding with the joy a child should see and dream about and remember to tell stories about to their children.  
Can we do this?  Will we remember to tell our wondrous stories or will we only remember the cries from the deep ~