Waves are cylinders of storm energy that displace water.
Thad Ziolkowski, The Drop: How the Most Addictive Sport Can Help Us Understand Addiction and Recovery
This quote from Tom Bissell’s New York Times book review resonated as I took in the passion of a stormy sea at our favorite South Florida beach recently. The waves smashed onto the beach, releasing some of that pent-up energy into the air and the rest onto the sand with such force that my bare feet tingled.
We are awed by the sea
We come to the sea to be awed. To take the measure of our puny selves against the enormity of nature. To understand that, as Scott Russell Sanders writes in his preface to Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World:
…human presence is only a thin film stretched over mystery.
Scott Russell Sanders
Yet we have polluted it
And yet, thin film though we are, humans are managing to meddle with nature with irrevocable results: sea level rise floods more and more of our coastal areas; warm ocean waters gin up hurricanes with wind and deluge that rend lives and livelihoods; wildfires burn out of control across the globe.
In Florida, run-off pollution is killing off seagrass and the manatees that feed on it, writes Kimberly Miller in The Palm Beach Post. Turtles and other marinelife injest plastic, and the lucky ones are brought back to health by the Loggerhead Marinelife Center.
We are off-handed in our support of the status quo, blaming convenience as we buy what want, toss it out when we’re done, and turn a blind eye to the results. But look at the results, plastic that I collected on this very beach.
Enter The Beach Bucket Foundation
The Beach Bucket Foundation, an inspiration of Palm Beach County resident Andy Abbott, has a bucket station conveniently located in the parking lot, making it easy to help clean human debris from the sand and keep it out of the water. I collected a bucketful. Thank you, Palm Beach County Parks and Recreation!
One person’s initiative blossoms among many
By including local municipalities, businesses, and organizations and having them show their support and involvement through our buckets and encouraging them to hold multiple cleanups throughout the year, we will be creating even more awareness and cleanup events throughout our communities to get involved in.
Andy Abbott, The Beach Bucket Foundation
Let sunlight flame in a blade of grass, let night come on, let thunder roar and tornado whirl, let the earth quake, let muscles twitch, let mind curl about the least pebble or blossom or bird, and the true wildness of this place, of all places, reveals itself.
Scott Russell Sanders, STAYING PUT: MAKING A HOME IN A RESTLESS WORLD
