Slow
Sand Writers Society
fiction
and creative nonfiction
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Slow
Sand Writers Society
fiction
and creative nonfiction
|
|
member pages former
member pages |
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Excerpt from the personal essay "Driftwood" Port Cyde, Maine. I cross the room, drawn to a small, natural sculpture of driftwood suspended in one of the inn’s open windows. Adorned with mussels, the water-washed piece of wood moves gently on the draft, evoking memories from a far-off home and a distant time: springtime above the Norwegian Arctic Circle, nature exploding with life. Solitary walks along deserted shorelines. The sound of a fishing boat thrumming across a fjord. Children bolting carefree along summer beaches, looking for eagle feathers and gifts washed up from the sea. Hearts going wild in daylit summer nights. It’s my first visit to Maine, a week in June, but the saline ocean air and the view of the harbor feel familiar, almost soothing. From my second-story porch, I’ve watched the evening sun setting the sky aflame in purple and gold, while fishing boats formed dark silhouettes against the softly undulating sea. A few cool, rainy days when sky and ocean merged into sodden shades of gray and the shrieks of gulls got a hoarser edge have reminded me even more of my northern shores. I've lived in the United States for five years now, in a northern Colorado college town where the Rocky Mountains meet the High Plains. I love my new home but still sometimes get nostalgic for the place I left. The trigger can be anything, like a twisted piece of wood suspended in a dining room window in Maine. I nudge the driftwood gently, watching as it dangles from the nylon thread attaching it to the window's top frame. On my Norwegian beaches, I'd often find those weatherworn logs and scraps, marked by cracks and crevices, torn by a rusty, old nail. I'd pick them up, study their shape. To what had they once belonged? The hull of a rowing boat broken in a storm? An aging wharf beyond its time? On sunlit summer nights, my friends and I made bonfires on the beach, fed by driftwood. We'd stretch our hands toward the flames and sing, someone strumming a guitar, and talk about the future. At the mercy of no one and nothing, we'd dance to the beat of our own music. We'd decide, ourselves, on what shores to land. Or so we thought. While gulls kept fighting over discarded morsels of fish guts and waves rolled softly into the shore, receding and rolling back in again, night turned into morning. With wood-smoke in my hair and sea salt on my lips, I belonged. Later, I discovered different shores to explore, other landscapes to call home. A college town in Austria. A Spanish city on the Mediterranean. And now—the undulating expanse of the North American prairie as it pushes softly against the Rockies. I’m thrilled with the effervescent energy and stunning natural beauty of my new home territory. Rarefied alpine air and scar-faced, red rocks know how to boost my energy and renew my spirit. But north-Atlantic seascapes are still imprinted on my soul. They tug, telling me to come back, back to where I once belonged. I did belong. But it’s also true that I never quite belonged, for home is more than a matter of geography. Now my most important home has become a place within, an internal room with a view. A room that allows me to get in touch with myself and stretch out, genuinely, toward others. A room where I feel safe and in balance, undisturbed by the surface chatter of everyday life. A smell of coffee and the clink of silverware from the inn’s kitchen tell me breakfast is near. Other guests spill into the room, chatting and laughing. Before joining them, I touch the driftwood’s gnarled, water-polished surface one last time, fingertips caressing its rifts and knots. I used to think of driftwood—always at the mercy of wind and waves, always destined to strand itself on some random shore—as so different from me. But now lines of life mark my skin, too, and, as I consciously try to set my own course, I still don’t know what shores are still waiting or what harbor shall be my last. ^ top
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