August 12, 2021

Close Encounter with a Moon Snail

My journey is complete. No, not complete, but somehow feeling full circle in the way that I was needing yesterday.

Yesterday the smoke returned. August in the Pacific Northwest is not the August I floated carefree and lazily through as a child. The excitement of summer, those few precious months of brilliant sunshine and blue skies and perfect temperatures for swimming and lemonade stands and blackberry picking….like so many things in my life that have trickled through my fingertips, summer too, seems to have changed forever, water soaking down into sand never to be seen again.

Under smokey skies, the air stifling hot and orange with the acrid smell of far off fires, forests burning, I went to the road end to swim. I had spent the day, another day, with children. This week they learned to sew. I taught little boys and girls to sew.

These children are lucky.

They are coming to art camp, well fed, rested, loved, eager and curious. And we bring out recycled and repurposed materials and teach new skills with wire and thread and tape and they go wild. They are learning a little bit about renewable and limited resources. They are learning to share, and collaborate and make mistakes, using recycled corks and cardboard boxes and bottle caps. I love them all. Like my swims, they are full of surprises and remind me to look closely and pay attention or I’ll miss the important lessons they are teaching me just by observation alone.

My job is easy and hard.I’m tired when I get home, but I am full. Full like a moon snail.

Children have no secrets. What you see is what you get. They live for now, this moment, seeking out whatever is directly before them, burrowing down into sand when the tide recedes. They grow just as they should, with good air and water and a rich environment full of plenty of food.

Spending days with children has helped me reconnect with myself, much like the sea.

My late afternoon swim was through clear water, speckled with brown flecks. The air was hot, the sky a brownish haze over the Olympics. I knew I’d be pulling extra smoke into my lungs but I was so desperate to swim I didn’t care.

My heart was full from a day with children, and heavy thinking about our hot planet and what the future may bring.

I wanted to go home, smoke be damned. I swam south, the water smooth on the surface, rocks still below me. This is where I needed to be.

I tried to focus on the task at hand—breathing. The bubbles burst forth, I sucked in breathes, one by one. I swam and I thought about seals. And crabs. Where were they? How are they adapting to this changing climate? Will they survive? Will we? A blizzard of brown flecks surrounded me. I kept swimming, letting the water hold me again.

I refocused on the world below me, reminding myself to just look. See what I could see right below me. Rocks and shells appeared, hazy and still. Waiting for nothing. Just being—rocks and shells. A strange and familiar sight caught my eye. Yes. A moon snail shell below me. I pushed the water before me, judged the depth, unhooked my float and dove down to pluck the broken spiral from the sea floor.

It has been a few months since I last found a moon snail shell. As I tucked it carefully into my float, I smiled to myself. I needed a sign. Something to trust, believe in. Hope for our planet. Something, anything to assure me that somehow we will make it through.

I kept swimming. Below me a blurry white shape caught my eye. Could it be? Yes. On instinct I unhooked my float again, and dove down again, surfacing with a massive live moon snail. The snail itself bulged from below its shell, a massive white body, firm but soft. I carefully perched it upon my forearm.

A year and a half of open water swimming and I was holding a live snail for the very first time. The weight of its body was reassuring. If this snail could survive, surely we can too. As it rested heavy on my forearm, it’s foot slowly wrapped itself down around my arm. The weight of it slowed my breathing, stalled my thoughts.

I studied this voracious eater, looked for its eyes, marveled at its size and wondered about its age. I believe these creatures can live up to 15 or so years. By the looks of it, it could be the age of my youngest son.

I felt a wave of hope and joy and love course through me. We must all adapt, and grow and change.

Surely we will find a way. Surely we will save the moon snails. We must.

All is not lost, but we are out of time. As I carefully returned the moon snail to the sea floor, I let go of something.

To go forward we have to let go. Over and over again. Like swimming. One breath in, one breath out.

Bubbles and shells and children.