"The great rhythms of nature, today so dully disregarded, wounded even..."

Chatham beach on Cape Cod: Spring 2013

CC Jean Stimmell

"At the foot of the cliff a great ocean beach runs north and south unbroken, mile lengthening into mile. Solitary and elemental, unsullied and remote and possessed by the outer sea, these sands might be the end of the world.”

These words written by Henry Beston in the 1920s while spending “a year of life on the great beach of Cape Cod” strike a deep chord with me, evoking the same ethereal feelings  and  primal rapture  that I  experienced walking these very same beaches two weeks ago – along with a clammy feeling of impending doom about the price we are going to have to pay for ravaging this stunning Earth, our mother and only home.

“Age by age, the sea here gives battle to the land; age by age, the earth struggles for her own, calling to her defence her energies and her creations... The great rhythms of nature, today so dully disregarded, wounded even, have here the spacious and primeval liberty; clouds and shadow of cloud; wind and tide, tremor of night and day." *

Also, click here to to read a paradigm-shifting Sufi quote, brought to the surface of my mind by an earlier trip to the Cape.

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