Forces of Nature

Several years ago I started getting notifications from Google about my website http://www.secondlooks.biz which includes a photography site, a resume site, and a writing site, as well as contents that accompanies my ebooks sold on Amazon. Google wanted me to include language and design that would optimize my web-page content for mobile as well as desktop platforms. Mostly self-taught, I had dabbled in HTML and CSS and Javascript and had even taken a class as far back as 2010 and had many hundreds of web-pages, but somehow getting the mobile platform statements right on those pages eluded me. When I incorporated those statements, my pages ended up looking worse on mobile platforms such as my iphones and ipads. The upshot was that I removed the statements and Google quit including me in their web-search results so that people could no longer find my content, even with a specific phrase. :(

While this seems to hold true for my blog site as well, I have decided to migrate some of my work into blog pieces to hopefully increase the chances of being found and preserving some of these writings. as I am now in my early seventies and retired. After I graduated from college in 1972, I worked for an inner city youth ministry called Teen Haven in Philadelphia for 3 and a half years. Teen Haven was founded by the Reverend Bill Drury. The following piece Forces of Nature is from my Teen Haven Diary.

Forces of Nature

by

Jeanne Winstead

 

When I was working at the Philadelphia Teen Haven in the seventies, I took a day and went to one of the New Jersey boardwalk towns along the Atlantic Ocean. Ocean City, maybe.

I spend the whole day on the beach, renewing an early childhood acquaintance with my beloved playmate, the Ocean. My dad had taught me to dive under its waves, and to ride them back in to shore. So after being away for most of my landlocked life, I revel in the moving water like it was a living thing, get slapped and slobbered on by its playful, puppy waves. I love its hugeness. I’m in and out of it all day long.

Along toward the end of the day, now sun-baked dry and crisp with sand, I decide to go in for one last swim before heading back to Philly.  So I run blithely out into the water. Quite a few people are here. The man next to me speaks.

“Are you sure you want to be out here?”

He stands head and shoulders above me.

I look around. It occurs to me that there are some things I hadn’t noticed…like the only people out in this water are large, burly men. That the water seems a little rough. Then I see it coming at us. This huge wave, bigger than any I’ve seen up close in my whole life. All the men groan, collectively. I have this sudden urge to latch on to the man who’d asked me the question. But I know we’ll both drown if I do that. Too late to get away from it, I have to go under it. I must not let it break on me!

“Dive!” yells the man who asked me the question.

We throw ourselves under the fast breaking crest. The water pulls me back as I come out the other side to see another huge wave coming right at us. The last one was too close for comfort, and I struggle out to meet this new wave farther away from land. I hope to catch it before it starts to break and ride it back to shore. But it takes all my strength just to reach it before it breaks.  The same with the next. And the next. Some waves are bigger and some crest sooner. Each time I get through one, the water drags me away from the next one, which is rapidly approaching.  I fight my way desperately back toward it, and I barely make it under before it breaks. The sheer power of that water, that Force of Nature. I’m no match for it. It’s no longer a friendly thing. And I’m getting so tired. Deep under the surface, the water swirling around my face, bubbling through my hair, I pray, “Please, God, don’t let me drown. Not like this.”

 I surface and finally catch a smaller wave and ride it in to shore. It spits me out in the shallow water, grinding me along the sand. When I get up out of the water, I’m bleeding from scratches on my legs and arms. 

And I’m so grateful. And embarrassed.

I struggle to walk back to my beach blanket hiding my shredded dignity. But my legs are weak. That eternity, actually just fifteen minutes spent with Mother Nature’s fury has sapped my strength for the rest of the day.

I know people who have drowned. It always takes you by surprise. 

I still consider the Ocean my friend and playmate. But ever since that day I never have quite the same view of it as I did from my childhood.

Ever since that day I’ve had a deeper respect for the power of water.

The forces of Nature put me in mind of another story about my Dad. Dad was a mining geologist. When I was ten years old, he got a job with Cerro de Pasco, and we moved from a brief stint in New York City to Santiago, Chile.  The mine was located in the Cordillera, the Chilean name for a mountain range that was part of the Andes. Cerro named the mine Rio Blanco after the river that wound through that area. Rio Blanco meant White River, so named for its rapids, I suppose.

Cerro owned a hotel/resort for its employees just a mile or so below the mine itself. A beautiful place in the pines at the base of a hill halfway up the Andes. So we spent a lot of time in Rio Blanco.

The drive from Santiago to the hotel was beautiful. Narrow winding roads and hair-raising heights, and if you happened to be driving through around sun set, the entire sky and the massive cliffs would all turn a deep red.

 When we reached the base of the Cordillera, we were on the same level as the river. It looked wide at that point. Eventually it turned into a slender ribbon about an inch wide, it seemed, as we looked down at it. Somewhere at that point, there was a place where Dad liked to stop for the view. It was a cliff with a sheer, ninety-degree drop to the river far below. What I would do is walk out to the very edge of that dizzying height, and with my toes almost hanging over, stand and look down at the tiny river below. It was intoxicating.

My mom and grandma Renzetti, would gasp and beg me to get away from the edge. I ignored them. So they would plead with Dad to do something.

“Leave her alone,” was all he’d say to them.

As my parents got ready to leave, I’d walk away from the cliff and climb back into the car. That spot was one of my favorite places in the whole world.

JuneBug

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