Aftermath

Superstorm Sandy.

I've been struggling to create a coherent set of thoughts about this monster. The wreckage and sadness on my computer screen speak so loudly to the heart of The Flotsam Diaries. Of overbuilt coastlines, rising tides, plastic lives. Polluted lives.

Yet writing about what Sandy has wrought from the lens of the Diaries has seemed gauche.

Maine was spared her worst. Our condo was spared entirely. We even got the recycling bins stored away safely so not one bottle blew out and besmirched our lawn. Our family is all OK. Even those family members in the direct path of the storm -- inland southern New Jersey -- suffered no worse than power outages or nearby tree limbs down.

Meanwhile New Jersey's coast bore so much. So much loss. Not to mention New York City herself, Long Island, Connecticut. Beyond. And of course before all that, death and destruction in the Caribbean too.

I work on human-scale events. Ripped beach balls, a broken umbrella base, flowerpot scraps. A menu blown from a beachside restaurant. Occasionally household rubbish that blows out of a trash bin and goes down a storm drain.

I have collected & cataloged more than 25,000 pieces of manmade debris. Some of it thoughtlessly left behind, some accidentally lost. Surely, some of it the poignant remains of some greater disaster.

25,000 pieces. When Sandy struck, each single solitary wave that hammered each town pulled that much debris into the ocean. Up and down a coastline stretching hundreds of miles. For hours and hours.

The scale of what one storm has done to people's lives is shocking. The scale of what it did to the ocean is shattering.

But on Tuesday morning, I went to my part of the ocean. I had to see it. It was almost a compulsion. I thought I was going in order to look for erosion and debris. It turns out, I was going in order to see this:

That hole in the heavens opened up as I was wrapping up my check-in. It lasted in its glory for about 30 seconds.

On the way to the cove, I had stopped at a convenience store for some coffee. I even chatted with the owner for about 5 minutes. I have never had the urge to pull over and get coffee on any trip to the beach. If I hadn't this time, I would have been gone from the cove before seeing -- and capturing -- this.

It brought to mind a line from my hero Tolkien:

"In the end, the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

Tomorrow I'll be back at the cove, picking up debris like I always do. While folks 400 miles away do the same thing. On a different scale.

To them, my heart goes out and my hat is off.

Hope, Despair, and that Strange Place In-Between

People ask me, as I explain my passion, "What hope do you have to change things?" I tell them the truth. I have little. The problem is vast, the politicians are feckless, corporate interests are rich & entrenched. And the 100% predictable result has already happened.

Tromsø, Norway; 200 miles north of
the Arctic Circle (photo: Bo Eide*)

So. Hope? No. Not really.

Then why keep picking litter off the beach, writing stories, trying? Because there's a difference between losing hope and giving in to despair. Despair is paralysis. Despair is also extremely arrogant -- it presumes that we can know with certainty that our actions are useless. Despair is Denethor, throwing himself onto a pyre rather than face a future that to him can only be black & bleak.

I'd rather cast in my lot with Theoden, riding headlong into overwhelming odds because it's simply the right thing to do.

That sounds like bluster. But, in truth, it's the opposite. It's deep humility. For all that I think I know, and think I've learned, I don't know how the story ends. So I do what I do because I love my daughter and I think the world is beautiful and I want to preserve it. It's my path.

And there is a strange freedom & clarity that comes from leaving both hope & despair behind. It's re-energizing. "Hoping" puts the burden on someone else. "Doing" puts the burden -- the control -- in my own hands. So no, I can't change the world. But I can change my part of it. And no, I can't make it better forever. But I can make it better for today. This one moment when the beach is deserted and the gulls are crying and the surf is pounding and the breeze is carrying salt on the air... and the sand is clean.

And it just might stay clean long enough for the next lonely wanderer to look down. And notice.

Sometimes, the point isn't to do the right thing because you hope or think something awesome will come from it. It's because, it's the right thing. And because "even the wise cannot see all ends." As I've witnessed, the actions of one person have a funny way of reaching beyond them in ways & times most unexpected.

I have ideas, plans, contacts, and goals for 2012. I'm going to expand my work, meet new people, do what I can, and increase what I can do. Not because I have hope, but because I don't despair.

---

* For more images in and around Tromsø, please check out Bo Eide's fabulous blog: Life Up North; this image (saved originally from Facebook) comes from this post: http://lifeupnorth.posterous.com/collecting-marine-litter-above-the-arctic-cir

Working Together, Apart

I was recently talking with another Mainer who lives a bit further south than I. She also picks up garbage on her beach. On her way back home one morning, she drove by a man wandering down the country lane. He too was picking up litter along the roadside. That roadside's gullies drain to the ocean & her beach. His time & work meant less garbage for her to pick up "downstream," and more time to enjoy the beauty of the place.

The tragedy is, there are no pristine coasts left in the world. Man-made debris has reached every corner. 80% of it is plastic, so it will be there beyond all of our lifetimes. But once in a while, you may still stumble upon a scene that looked like it once did. "In the quiet of the world," as my hero Tolkien would have put it. It's not because that place has escaped the indignities we've dumped on it. It's because somebody else has been there before you, and taken their time to make it better. Even if just for a while.

I was touched by the story of the beach and the road. The idea that a kindness done may trickle down & reach someone beyond your thought. It put in mind a work by another of my literary heroes, Robert Frost. His "The Tuft of Flowers" brings the point beautifully home. I reproduce it here in full, borrowing the wording from the Web site "Representative Poetry Online."

---

I went to turn the grass once after one

Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen

Before I came to view the levelled scene.

I looked for him behind an isle of trees;

I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,

And I must be, as he had been,--alone,

`As all must be,' I said within my heart,

`Whether they work together or apart.'

But as I said it, swift there passed me by

On noiseless wing a 'wildered butterfly,

Seeking with memories grown dim o'er night

Some resting flower of yesterday's delight.

And once I marked his flight go round and round,

As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

And then he flew as far as eye could see,

And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

I thought of questions that have no reply,

And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;

But he turned first, and led my eye to look

At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared

Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

I left my place to know them by their name,

Finding them butterfly weed when I came.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,

By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.

But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

The butterfly and I had lit upon,

Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,

That made me hear the wakening birds around,

And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

And feel a spirit kindred to my own;

So that henceforth I worked no more alone;

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,

And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech

With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

`Men work together,' I told him from the heart,

`Whether they work together or apart.'

---

Never think any of your actions are in vain. You may not even have the faintest idea whose world you're making better in doing them.

The Professor and the Ocean

Long-time readers of The Flotsam Diaries are well-acquainted with my love of Tolkien's work. This passage might help explain the attraction:

"At last, at unawares... he came suddenly to the black brink of Middle-earth, and saw the Great Sea, Belegaer the Shoreless. And at that hour the sun went down beyond the rim of the world, as a mighty fire; and Tuor stood alone upon the cliff with outspread arms, and a great yearning filled his heart. It is said that he was the first of Men to reach the Great Sea, and that none, save the Eldar, have ever felt more deeply the longing that it brings."

J.R.R. Tolkien, Unfinished Tales, pp. 24-25

I've not read elsewhere that Professor Tolkien was, himself, particularly drawn to the seashore. But these are the words of a man with ocean on the brain.

Artwork by Ted Nasmith, illustrator
of The Silmarillion