Speaker 1: Us was to yours the tide pool There was a
Speaker 1: stretch of coastline where the rocks were smooth and flat,
Speaker 1: and the tide pools were deep and clear. A woman
Speaker 1: named Lena went there every Sunday morning before the sun
Speaker 1: was fully up, when the air was still cool and
Speaker 1: the beach was empty. She carried a small canvas bag
Speaker 1: with a thermis of tea and a notebook, and she
Speaker 1: would sit on the rocks and watch the tide pools
Speaker 1: and write down what she saw. Lena was a marine biologist,
Speaker 1: or she had been. She had spent twenty years studying
Speaker 1: the creatures that lived in the narrow strip between the
Speaker 1: land and the sea, the tiny crabs and the anemones,
Speaker 1: and the snails that clung to the rocks with a
Speaker 1: grip that seemed impossible for something so small. She had
Speaker 1: published papers and given lectures and won a small award
Speaker 1: that sat on her shelf in a frame. And then
Speaker 1: one spring she had stopped, not because she was tired
Speaker 1: of it, but because she had realized that she was
Speaker 1: spending so much time studying the tide pools that she
Speaker 1: had forgotten how to simply sit with them. So she
Speaker 1: quit her position at the university, and she moved to
Speaker 1: a small cottage near the coast, and she started going
Speaker 1: to the tide pools on Sunday mornings. She did not
Speaker 1: bring a microscope or a sampling kit. She brought tea
Speaker 1: and a notebook, and she sat on the rocks and watched.
Speaker 1: The tide pools were different every week. The water was
Speaker 1: clearer after a storm, the colors were brighter in the
Speaker 1: early morning light. The creatures moved differently depending on the
Speaker 1: temperature and the time of day. Lena wrote it all down,
Speaker 1: not in the language of science, but in the language
Speaker 1: of someone who was paying attention. She wrote about the
Speaker 1: way a hermit crab would pause at the edge of
Speaker 1: a rock, as if deciding whether to go on. She
Speaker 1: wrote about the way the anemones would close when the
Speaker 1: shadow of a gull passed overhead, and then open again
Speaker 1: slowly when the shadow was gone. She wrote about the
Speaker 1: tiny fish that gathered in the corners of the pools,
Speaker 1: their silver bodies flickering in the shallows, like thoughts that
Speaker 1: you cannot quite hold on to. The note book filled up,
Speaker 1: Lena bought another one, and then another. She started to
Speaker 1: recognize individual creatures. There was a crab with one smaller
Speaker 1: claw that she called Lefty. There was an enemy that
Speaker 1: was a deeper purple than all the others, and she
Speaker 1: called it Velvet. There was a snail that always seemed
Speaker 1: to be in the same spot, on the same rock,
Speaker 1: facing the same direction, and she called at the Philosopher.
Speaker 1: She knew, of course, that she was projecting. These creatures
Speaker 1: did not have names, or personalities or habits in the
Speaker 1: way that she imagined, but it made her feel connected
Speaker 1: to them, and that connection was the thing she had
Speaker 1: been missing when she was a scientist. The data was important,
Speaker 1: but the feeling of being part of the same world
Speaker 1: as these tiny, stubborn, beautiful creatures was more important. One
Speaker 1: Sunday in October, Lena arrived at the tide pools to
Speaker 1: find that something had changed. The rocks were the same,
Speaker 1: the water was the same, but there was a new pool,
Speaker 1: one she had never seen before. It was in a
Speaker 1: crevice between two large rocks, and it was deeper than
Speaker 1: the others, and the water in it was a shade
Speaker 1: of blue that she had never seen in a tide
Speaker 1: pool before. It was the blue of the sky at
Speaker 1: the moment when the stars are just beginning to show,
Speaker 1: a deep, quiet blue that seemed to go down forever.
Speaker 1: Lena sat down beside the new pool and looked into it.
Speaker 1: The water was so clear that she could see the bottom,
Speaker 1: which was covered in a fine white sand. There were
Speaker 1: no creatures in it, no rocks, no seaweed, just the
Speaker 1: sand and the water and the light. She sat there
Speaker 1: for a long time, watching the surface of the pool.
Speaker 1: It was perfectly still, without a ripple, and it reflected
Speaker 1: the sky above it like a mirror. Lena felt herself
Speaker 1: selling into a kind of stillness that matched the pool.
Speaker 1: Her breathing slowed, her thoughts quieted. She felt as if
Speaker 1: she were sinking into the rock, becoming part of the landscape.
Speaker 1: When she finally looked up, the sun was higher and
Speaker 1: the beach was no longer empty. A family was setting
Speaker 1: up a picnic further down the shore, and a dog
Speaker 1: was running in and out of the way. Lena stood up,
Speaker 1: stiff from sitting so long, and she looked back at
Speaker 1: the new pool. It was still there, still blue, still still.
Speaker 1: She came back the next Sunday and the pool was
Speaker 1: there again, and the sunday after that. She started to
Speaker 1: think of it as her pool, though she knew it
Speaker 1: did not belong to her. It belonged to the tide
Speaker 1: and the rocks and the moon that pulled the water
Speaker 1: in and out. She was just a visitor, the same
Speaker 1: as all the other creatures. In her note book, she
Speaker 1: wrote about the pool. She wrote about the color of
Speaker 1: the water and the stillness of the surface, and the
Speaker 1: way it made her feel. She wrote about how she
Speaker 1: would sit beside it and feel the world slow down,
Speaker 1: and how the feeling would stay with her for the
Speaker 1: rest of the day, like a quiet hum at the
Speaker 1: back of her mind. She started going more often, not
Speaker 1: just on Sundays, but on Wednesday mornings before work, and
Speaker 1: on Friday evenings, when the light was golden and the
Speaker 1: tide was low. She would sit by the pool and
Speaker 1: watch the light change on the water, and she would
Speaker 1: feel herself becoming calmer and more present and more alive.
Speaker 1: Her friends noticed the change. They said she seemed different,
Speaker 1: more at ease, more herself. Lina smiled and said she
Speaker 1: had found a good spot by the sea, and she
Speaker 1: left it at that. She did not tell them about
Speaker 1: the pool. It was not a secret exactly, it was
Speaker 1: just hers. Winter came and the storms were fierce, the
Speaker 1: waves crashed over the rocks, and the tide poles were
Speaker 1: churned and muddy. Lina stayed home on the worst days,
Speaker 1: drinking tea and reading and listening to the wind. She
Speaker 1: wereried about the pool. She worried that the storms would
Speaker 1: fill it with sand, or break the rocks apart, or
Speaker 1: change it in some way that she could not fix.
Speaker 1: But when the storms passed and she went back to
Speaker 1: the coast, the pool was there. It was the same
Speaker 1: deep blue, the same perfect stillness. The sand at the
Speaker 1: bottom was undisturbed, the water was clear. It was as
Speaker 1: if the pool existed in a different world, one where
Speaker 1: storms could not reach. Lena sat beside it and felt
Speaker 1: her whole body relax. She had been holding tension in
Speaker 1: her shoulders and her jaw and her hands without knowing it,
Speaker 1: and the pool released it all. She sat there for
Speaker 1: an hour, and then she walked home, and she slept
Speaker 1: that night with a depth and a peace that she
Speaker 1: had almost forgotten was possible. Spring brought new life to
Speaker 1: the tide pool. The anemones opened wider, the crabs grew bolder,
Speaker 1: the tiny fish returned in greater numbers. Lina wrote about
Speaker 1: all of it in her note books, filling page after
Speaker 1: page with her careful, loving observations, but she always saved
Speaker 1: the last few pages for the blue pool. She wrote
Speaker 1: about the way the light moved across it in the morning.
Speaker 1: She wrote about the way the surface caught the colors
Speaker 1: of the sky, turning pink and gold and then deep
Speaker 1: blue as the evening came. She wrote about the way
Speaker 1: it made her feel, which was the same every time,
Speaker 1: but also different because she was different every time she
Speaker 1: sat beside it. Years passed, Lena grew older, her hair
Speaker 1: turned gray, and her hands grew stiff in the cold,
Speaker 1: but she never stopped going to the tide pools. The
Speaker 1: Sunday morning ritual was the anchor of her week, the
Speaker 1: thing that held everything else in place. She would wake
Speaker 1: before dawn, pack her bag, walk to the coast, and
Speaker 1: sit on the rocks with her tea and her note book.
Speaker 1: The blue pool was always there. It never changed, It
Speaker 1: never dried up, it never filled with sand or seaweed.
Speaker 1: It was the one constant in a world that was
Speaker 1: always shifting, and Lina was grateful for it in a
Speaker 1: way that she could not dispress in words. One Sunday morning,
Speaker 1: as she was sitting beside the pool, a young woman appeared.
Speaker 1: She was carrying a note book and a pen, and
Speaker 1: she looked at the pool the way Lena had looked
Speaker 1: at it the first time, with wonder and recognition. Is
Speaker 1: this your spot, the young woman asked. It is not mine,
Speaker 1: Lena said, but I have been coming here for a
Speaker 1: long time. The young woman sat down beside her and
Speaker 1: they watched the pool together, tho the water was still,
Speaker 1: the light was soft, the world was quiet. It is beautiful,
Speaker 1: the young woman said. Lena nodded, it is, she said.
Speaker 1: It is the most beautiful thing I know. They sat
Speaker 1: together for a while, and then the young woman left,
Speaker 1: and Lina was alone again with the pool and the
Speaker 1: rocks and the sea. She opened her notebook and wrote
Speaker 1: about the encounter, and about the way it felt to
Speaker 1: share the pool with someone else, and about the way
Speaker 1: the light was moving across the water, slow and golden
Speaker 1: and endless. The tide pools are still there along the coast,
Speaker 1: where the rocks are smooth and flat. If you ever
Speaker 1: find yourself needing a place to be still, a place
Speaker 1: where the world slows down and the noise fades away,
Speaker 1: find a tide pool, sit beside it, watch the water.
Speaker 1: Listen to the quiet, and if you are very patient
Speaker 1: and very still, you might find a pool that is
Speaker 1: deeper and bluer than all the others, a pool that
Speaker 1: reflects the sky like a mirror, A pool that holds
Speaker 1: the stillness of the whole world in its small, clear depths.
Speaker 1: Sit with it, Breathe, and let the quiet settle over
Speaker 1: you like the tide, slow and gentle, and sure the
Speaker 1: pool will be there when you come back. It will
Speaker 1: always be there.