I drove out to Muir Beach the day before my thirtieth birthday. I felt a deep pull inside me to go and to go alone. A ritual of release and welcome. I walked slowly back and forth along the shore. The waves, edged in white foam, rushed to touch my feet and ankles and shins and then receded, over and over again.

On the beach, I saw a glowing orb in the sand. I thought it was sea glass, but when I picked it up it turned out to be a small piece of shell, worn smooth by the waves. The iridescent underside had caught the sunlight and reflected an eye-catching turquoise. The top was a faded blue and on it were three white lines.

After I couldn’t feel my feet anymore from the cold, I walked out of the ocean and sat down on the beach. I came across this poem. I must have read it before because I’ve had the book (American Primitive) forever, but it hit me in such a fresh way. The confirmation that nothing is truly lost. The assurance that following pleasure and curiosity leads to the place where everything lost is found.

 

HONEY AT THE TABLE

It fills you with the soft
essence of vanished flowers, it becomes
a trickle sharp as a hair that you follow
from the honey pot over the table

and out the door and over the ground,
and all the while it thickens,

grows deeper and wilder, edged
with pine boughs and wet boulders,
pawprints of bobcat and bear, until

deep in the forest you
shuffle up some tree, you rip the bark,

you float into and swallow the dripping combs,
bits of the tree, crushed bees — a taste
composed of everything lost, in which everything
lost is found.

– Mary Oliver

This coming year, I hope to follow curiosity and pleasure rather than fear. I want to embrace both joy and sorrow, to let go of expectations of how things should be and to welcome things just as they are.