If you pick up a globe and hold the world at arms’ length, from that vantage point you will see that there is no Pacific, Indian or Atlantic Ocean. There is just one ocean, one giant pool of water.
An enterprising fish could easily swim, if he had the time, bravery and longevity from where I am in Oregon through the Panama Canal, to Boston to Galway to Dakar to Mumbai to Sydney to Kona and back home. To the now worldly and much respected fish, it would have just seemed like a long way to go in a big salty lake. After all, he had been swimming for days and never once had to hitch a ride across dry land.
This weary fish does not know the difference between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and would not care for the arbitrary names we have assigned them. He’d only care about how the waters made him feel, and they’d have made him feel very differently as he swished his tail through them all.
(Any fishologists out there, please keep your letters to yourselves. It’s just an exemplum. Any linguists out there, yes I did look “exemplum” up, but not “fishologist”. I’m sure it’s right though.)
The point is, at the most basic level, water is water no matter where it flows. Wind is wind no matter how you it blows against you. Stone is stone and land is land no matter where you set your foot. Fire is fire, no matter when you burn it. And yet each instance of these elements is unique. They are the same. They are different.
They are all aspects of unity.
Tonight, I am poised atop this dramatic and rocky coastline, a mere few hundred miles from my destination, bathed in the soft glow of my motel room. There are three spiders outside my window, each one sitting at the center of an intricate web in the salt winds of the Oregon coast. They have gathered their little commune around the light of the balcony, a perfect perch in which to wait for the disoriented moths and exploit their desire for the moon.
This is the night before the night before, a reflection of a similar time 19 days ago. Then, I was considering leaving upon the journey, bidding farewell to all that I had ever known. Tonight, I am preparing to set my base camp upon Puget Sound, to leave the wanderlust and a way of life I have lived for over two weeks.
I have driven for 6,000 miles, from the cornfields of Iowa into the grasslands of South Dakota, to the Badlands and Wounded Knee. I have continued through the Black Hills across the plains of Wyoming to Yellowstone. I have seen the Medicine Wheel, been visited by eagles, ravens, hawks, falcons, buffalo, elk, deer, seals, sea lions, spiders, and weasels. I have traveled through the salt flats of Utah and south into the mountains of red rock and dust to Sedona. I have flown across the desert, skirting the edge of Death Valley to set foot into the oceans of California. I have charted the Pacific coastline of the mainstream United States north of Los Angeles through most of Oregon.
Along the way, I’ve been picking up the bits of me I’d lost or left behind and preparing to put them together again. I did so at the tops of mountains, at the bottoms of waterfalls, in the middle of deserts, at the foot of ancient trees. These are my worldly oceans. They are me. They are also a part of everything else. Mixed in the bag is the dust, the bark, the mosses, the seashells, the lost feathers, the random stones that fell into my shoe as I walked. I cannot separate them from me as we are also the same.
And so, I say goodnight in equal fondness to the hunter and the hunter playing our their own little scenario outside my window. I bid farewell to that mythic fish who is probably sitting at a fish pub somewhere telling his stories.
I pile my bag of in the corner, make a nest in it’s folds, and settle in for one more sleep.
Route: 1 North, north north