Wild Seas

Why do we love big mountains and wild seas?

Wednesday, January 10, 2024
Studio, 9:50 am

When I lived in Colorado, I had an altimeter app on my phone. I could tell you the altitude where we stood at any given moment; my old house was at 7210 feet. (I still have the app and just checked it. I’m sitting at 45 feet.)

Here, I have an app that tells me the times of high and low tide, and what height the swell is.

I can tell you it’s very windy, and the tide is almost a king tide, which starts tomorrow. The swell is quite high, washing high onto the beach, leaving debris against the dunes, and foam the color of dirty snow. It’s magnificent and powerful and I haven’t tired of watching it. Especially when it’s high like this, pushing into into the creek below my house, I can’t take my eyes off of it. I take photos, both with my phone and my Canon, but none of them really do it any justice. The scale is so vast that it just looks like ocean and more ocean and waves breaking, surging, swelling. In person, it’s much more awe-inspiring. There’s so much power in the water, the force of the waves, the relentless and eternal tide. 

I grew up in Colorado, where the Rockies and 14 thousand foot peaks call people from all over the world. Hikers bag the peaks, collecting badges for each of the 52 mountains*. Some are quite daunting, some easier because you start higher or there is a very clear trail. None are actually easy because breathing over 10,000 feet starts to be at trick. Each of your feet will feel as if it weighs 3000 pounds, as if gravity has suddenly tripled. 

More casual hikers come to enjoy the beauty of the bright air, the vivid sky, the smell of pine and sun-baked dirt. I am an avid hiker myself, and I have hiked one 14-er, Pikes Peak, an easyish one because there’s a good trail all the way to the top, if by good trail you mean something includes the giant staircase of boulders at the end, when you already can’t life your legs. There is a marathon up and down every year, and my runner husband has actually run it. 

The mountains look friendly, parked there against that dazzling sky. People feel an affinity to them, feeling the mountains are their place, that they’ve been called to hike those trails, feel that sunshine, glimpse an elk or maybe a bear in the distance. I get it. I have felt that way, too. Some of my very best memories are sitting with my hot feet in a cold stream, high altitude sun on my shoulders. The body loves being slightly sweaty from exertion, and all those endorphins flood through our veins with bouncy delight. 

As a native of Colorado, I always warned people to take enough water, to have first aid kits (even a tiny one) and a map. Sometimes, they’d poo-poo my concern—they knew what they were doing. They love nature.

The thing is, nature doesn’t love you. It doesn’t actually care about you at all. 

People come to see the king tides, too, drawn by the wild high surf, the waves crashing against cliffs to send spray fifty or a hundred feet into the air. I’ve been a king tide tourist, too, though I never seemed to manage to get to the coast on the right king tide, only a minor one, never realizing until I got to Oregon that sometimes an ordinary storm is even more impressive. A couple of weeks ago, my friend and I took coffee out to my balcony to watch a massive tide crashing into the dunes, exclaiming over and over at how high it was! Look at that wave ripping along the dune! Whoa, look at those logs rolling around like sticks! 

It’s dazzling to watch. All that power. All that nature, roaring around, literally. Making so much noise it’s like a train on days like this. 

But the ocean doesn’t care about me, or you. (As if to emphasize this thought, a red Coast Guard helicopter is flying over.) It’s very rainy today, so nobody is venturing onto the beach, but two weeks ago, I saw quite a few people marching down the trail, only to turn around and come right back up. A storm tide or king tide is not a time to get out on the beach—people get rolled and badly hurt by logs, by the force of tides, by getting caught in a sneaker wave that clobbers them. 

Hikers get lost in the mountains all the time. All the time. They take a little wrong turn and end up far out in the wilderness. They lose cell phone service and can’t call for help. They shiver through a cold summer night and try to find things to eat and drink out of a stream if they’re lucky. Most of the time, they’re found. It doesn’t have to be dire to be miserable. 

It’s glorious, don’t get me wrong. Being out in nature is one of the best things we can do for ourselves and the earth. And I frankly adore this weather, these crazy tides, but I’m going to view it all safely from my house on the hill, a ravine between me and the sea. 

Nature doesn’t care about me, or you, or that bird that just barely missed being drowned. And isn’t that one of the reasons we like it so much? In the face of a 14,000 foot peak or a wild sea storm, we are small. Our lives, our problems, even the troubles of our epoch, are miniscule. The tide, the mountains, even time itself give us perspective. I am small. This day is small. 

But aren’t we so lucky to experience the magnificence? 

* The white tents on top of the Denver International Airport honor the 52 14,000 foot peaks.