The rocking cradle of the ships hull moves you, constantly. You feel the water below, and it is not just the water. You feel the wind-sculpted waves, the ice that has cooled the currents. You feel a piece of this movement, and you know there is life in it. From below the depths pieces of this life emerge – a fin, a flipper, a head. You sense there is more of it, hovering in the silences we float upon.
When you come to shore your feet lock again into the slow grounded rhythm of walking. It is then that you feel alien, because it is not the same land you know. The tallest plants can be measured in millimeters. Beyond that there are footprints – occasional notes that others are walking here, that we are not alone. You see this scarcity, like footprints, you see only what is not there, where life was, where it could be. In the ocean it is at least a mystery.
With so little life you begin to see the nations of stones. The red flakes like thin slices, so thin they crack underfoot. The deep black veins that roll out of the gray folding lines. Layer upon layer, years upon years – exposing. And there are white stones, scattered like snow. I held one in my hand as I walked, it held my heat like sympathy and gave it back to me in my palm.
