STARS IN THE SEA

 

by Dorothy Mack

 

I love to walk up and down Oregon’s beaches barefoot in the surf. Not on the dry sand, not on the wet sand, and not too deep, just where the waves lap and surge, where the foam breaks and swirls.

I want to feel the ocean, feel the white surf fizz around my ankles, let broken sand dollars bump my toes, kelp fronds caress my arches, agate pebbles roll just beyond reach.

One sunny September morning I was walking with two friends at Beverly Beach near Newport. The water was too nippy, they said, so they stayed on the sand, but I had to stride into the sea, to that evanescent world, fluid and luminous.

So we walked down the beach together, separated by surf.

Before me foam broke into puffs that floated on the surface of the clear water.

Behind me the sun shone down on the puffs to create round shadows underneath on the hard-packed sand floor.

But, just in that moment -- that still, suspended moment, between ebb and flow, between wave crashing in and wave sucking out -- just then I saw the shadows turn into stars!

Stars shining on the sand in the water, small stars with dark centers, and three- four- five-eight points radiating out into light.

As the ebb continued, before the sand grains themselves were sucked back, the star shadows danced in the water, water pulled back out to sea.

Magic! How could I have walked the beach all these years and missed seeing these dark stars? I’d seen bright stars reflected on calm moonlit lakes, but nothing like these dark stars in the sea.

I stared, sucked into an inverted world, upside down, inside out, dark stars with gleaming spines of light. magic, ephemeral.

Reverse reflections/images of light. How could it be?

Round shadows transform into dark stars radiating spines gleaming with light!

Refraction, reflection.

Over and over I splashed through the surf, stopping to catch my breath as the stars formed around my ankles. Then I stood very still, so I wouldn’t spoil their shine.

"Look!" I called to my friends, now fifty feet ahead of me. "Come see the stars!"

"Starfish?" they asked, puzzled. There had been no storm to wash starfish up onto this exposed shallow beach.

"No! Stars!"

As they turned back, I stepped closer toward them and pointed. "See?"

They stood on the wet sand, peering at my finger.

"We don’t see any stars!" It was daytime, no reflection of stars on the waves.

"Well, they aren’t here just now. Wait till the next wave."

They backed away three steps. Now I didn’t see any stars, either. The shadows below the foam were only blobs.

It was as if, by calling my friends I had sent the stars away. As if I had spoiled the magic by trying too hard to share it, rather than hoarding my treasure.

Wave after wave foamed onto the shallow sand beach as the sun shone nearly overhead.

No stars.

Where had they gone? What could be wrong?

Ah -- we had moved in too close on the wet sand. Only out further, into two to four inches of water, would the light refract just so and star shadows form underwater on the hard sand.

As I waded eight feet further out, I pointed at my toes. "See, now there are stars!" I reached down and filtered star shadows through my fingers.

Then they saw them, too. Without a word they untied their sneakers and waded closer, into the stars.

Then we danced, all three of us, backs to the sun, pirouetting in the surf for miles down the beach, stepping into stars, stars on our toes, all the liquid way.