Highs & Lows

Before we moved on to a boat, a friend gave me this piece of advice to chew on, "The highs are very, very high and the lows are very, very low." Little did I know she was also referring to the tidal range. The Chesapeake Bay is not known for its tides, a just few inches up and down. Unless you live on the water like we do and observe the change each day, you probably wouldn't even notice it.

But once in a while the magic combination happens and we're living at the extremes. A nearly full moon + 24 inches of snow rapidly melting with a sudden warming + a steady 24 hour rain + a southerly wind pushing the Atlantic waters up into the Chesapeake Bay = flooding and insanely high tides.

This is what we woke up to.

Yeah, that's a long way down. And the stinger was that a wheel from our boarding ladder fell into the briny deep the day before, so getting on and off the boat was a wobbly endeavor at best.

With the water lapping over the planks, the marina turned off our shore side dock electricity for the day for safety. Normally no big deal as we run primarily on solar power. But we were socked in with fog ALL day (and it was a short day at that) and trying to run our winter heaters, without success. In other words, a long, cold, dark day counting the minutes until low tide.

The funny thing is, these extreme high tides usually happen in summer (when we don't care if we lose power and the sunshine goes on forever.) This time of year we have the opposite... with north winds emptying the Bay and we often wake up down low looking UP at the dock.

I love being able to feel the music of the tides as the sun and moon and earth do their cosmic dance. Perfectly in step, the earth eternally steadfast in holding tight to all things terrestrial. But ocean has a mind of her own, lured in every time, twice a day, reaching, swelling, yearning for the moon.  They tease and flirt. And we mere specks of flesh and blood can do nothing to change that. We just watch in awe of what the power of pure attraction can do. It's true this life has a lot of highs and lows. But if you can feel that universal rhythm, you realize that you just need to adjust the lines, check on your loved ones, and carry on.

Weeks like this always have me humming that Bob Marley song (so sweetly covered by Jack Johnson and Ben Harper)

In high seas or in low seas
I'm gonna be your friend,
I'm gonna be your friend.
In high tide or in low tide,
I'll be by your side,
I'll be by your side.