The dolphin’s path through the ocean paralleled the Stone Harbor, New Jersey beach. I walked in the same direction and watched small waves breaking out at sea. I searched for the dark fin to appear time and time again.
I felt energized each time the fin appeared.
Up and down the dolphin went, diving and surfacing in a seaside ballet of smooth, sleek rhythm.
I’d never seen a dolphin on the east coast and took the sighting as a sign of good fortune, which, of course, it was. Any dolphin sighting in its natural habit is good fortune, especially for the dolphin.
Then it was gone.
Call the moment nirvana or enlightenment.
Call it whatever you like.
Sooner or later, we’re on our own, trying to figure out the meaning of life for ourselves.
I hope you enjoy the ride because it seems to me that too many people, more and more each day, dismiss the simple pleasures of life and disconnect rather than reconnect with the sea, air and earth we all share.
A few days in perfect weather helped me understand that humans, particularly Americans, really need to share more information and opportunity. We need to work harder to get it right, to make it right – America, that is.
We too often make matters worse.
We disconnect from each other when we pass people on the street and look the other way. We shy away from certain subjects and refuse to listen to people who believe other than what we believe. We lock ourselves in a box of predictable superficiality.
A walk on the beach can clear my thoughts and offer up new perspective all at the same time.
A dolphin sighting is magic.
So is telling the woman who was checking out of the Lark Motel to have a safe trip home. She and her friend said they had been coming down the shore to the same cozy little motel for 35 years.
Magic is sitting in Henny’s seafood house and knowing that after opening its doors for business in 1931 that this season will be the last. The owners are checking out and new development will replace the traditional chowders, deviled crab and personal service that will forever reflect another time.
So is listening to the snap of the stars and stripes in the wind on Memorial Day and knowing that at home a little town was preparing to bury a soldier who died the week before in Afghanistan.
Magic is awareness, a willingness to see what others miss, to keep your eyes wide open when others are tightly closing theirs. Magic is molasses salty water taffy, an after dinner sambuca with my best friend and three days to finish the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer. It’s collecting magic rocks, treasures all, on the beach and taking them home to toss in the garden.
A dolphin symbolizes all that and more.
I’ve watched them elsewhere, in Mexico and California, and they always meant something special.
Last weekend’s dolphin means the most because it’s the most recent.
That means I’m alive and well and able to enjoy the sights and sounds of the shore, a place where soft sand sifts between my toes as I stretch and breathe during morning exercises on the beach.
Magic is coming home to Scranton as well.
Magic is finding out what happened when I was gone and knowing that I can do something about it. Magic is opening the bedroom window and smelling the crisp night air of my Hill section neighborhood fill my heart with the connection that roots me here forever.
No dolphins swim in the Lackawanna River – at least not to the best of my knowledge.
But maybe one day.
Like I told them down the shore, in Scranton, anything can happen.
Corbett
