OCEAN Magazine Winter 2010, Issue 25

  

   Imagine . . . Music
   by Jeff Beyl

   Synthesis of Tones in Harmony
   by Diane Buccheri

   Drawing a Line in the Sand
   by Diane Buccheri

   Living Waters
   by Edna Gordon

   Spirit Bear
   by Joy Ehle

   Arctic Ice
   by George Tombs

   Atlantic Assault
   by Diane Biuccheri

   Swim Back
   by Erin Lyndahl Martin

   Nerissa's Lover
   by Katherine Magendie

   Songs in the Key of Sea
   by Diane Buccheri and Kimberly Ford
   
   The Best Ride
   by Dannan O'Brien

   Man & Manatee
   by Neil Ever Osborne

   Gray
   by Christine Brooks

   A Hauntingly Lonely Place
   by Melba Milak





A glimpse into this issue . . .





  




   IMAGINE . . . MUSIC


   "Imagine a school of hammerhead sharks. Hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, schooling together like a large flock of birds,
   a herd of bison," author and musician Jeff Beyl prompts. "Imagine the sound of the water, if you could record it, along the body
   of a swordfish. It would surely sound different. Imagine if we could liken that sound to a musical note. Let’s say middle C if the
   note could be held, like if you were to hold the note on an organ. That note will resonate steadily through the water. Whereas
   the sound of a school of hammerhead sharks would be more like an orchestra playing arpeggios in many different key
   signatures." He continues, building the music adding sounds from the ocean into the symphony he thus creates, its momentum
   and complexity building.
 
   " There is music all around us. We just have to listen. Listen to the night, listen to the day. Listen to the landscape and the seascape.
   A river, the ocean, a waterfall. The wind. A squirrel cracking a nut. A black capped chickadee chirping 8th notes in a spruce tree
   outside your window. The whisper of falling snow. The cacophony of a thirty foot wave breaking at Waiamea. The gentle pulse of
   a monarch butterfly’s wing beat. A wolf in the distance. The symphonic crash of a humpback whale breaching offshore.

   Nature. Music. Imagine."


   Written by Jeff Beyl

   Photograph © James Michael Dorsey, www.jamesdorsey.com


   Read the Full Essay












  



   SYNTHESIS OF TONES IN HARMONY


   Energy from our cell phones, computers, electrical appliances, and gadgets
   flows through our air. Energy flows from our bodies too. Although we cannot
   see the energy, we sense it –– high energy from happiness or excitement, low
   energy emanating from sadness or tiredness, agitated energy from anger
   and fear, or the energy of love.

   Lattices of energy flow through our air, into our atmosphere, flow from the sun and
   moon and stars and other planets, intertwine with earth’s energy and flow within
   the ocean and into and out of us. Energy vibrates. Atoms, electrons, protons,
   neutrons, molecules, and particles vibrate with energy. The vibrations, like the
   vibrations of our vocal chords or from strings on a harp, create sound with their
   movement. The general pattern of energy that is created and re-created
   generates rhythms of repeating tones. A synthesis of tones in harmony makes
   music.

   Music flows throughout the universe, our atmosphere, the earth, through the
   ocean, through us, through the whales and tiny fish, in every atom, and with
   everything. We are all part of the lattice of energy, moving, vibrating, creating
   rhythm.  


   Written by Diane Buccheri

   Photograph © OCEAN Magazine


   Read the Full Article

 



   


  DRAWING A LINE IN THE SAND
 

    If you were to draw a line in the sand, it would be a line. If you drew a line for a half mile or ten miles along
    the beach, it would still be a line. But if you were to draw a line all the way around the earth, it would be a
    circle. Looking at only a portion, it would appear to be a line.

    A line is a one dimensional plane. A circle is one dimensional when thought of as a plane. A ball though, is
    a three dimensional circle, round in all directions, a sphere.

    The earth is round, the sun and moon are round, all the planets and stars are round. Everything in our solar
    system is round.

    Water changes easily and quickly, reacting to and adjusting to its environment, affected by the vibrations
    it absorbs and reflects, mirror-like, except three dimensional. And water is pervasive here on earth. All of
    earth’s living is made mostly of water. Like all matter, water’s atoms are geometrically structured and
    organized. The energy of every atom, the energy of a mass –– a drop of water, an ocean, our bodies –– 
    carries and resonates harmonic organization.
   
    An intrinsic vibrational pattern creates the harmonies. And water carries the harmonies. Water is the essence
    of harmonic life on earth.
  
    The repeating universal flow circles again and again, repeating patterns small and large. All flows in this
    universal flow, is part of it, creating harmonies with motion, blending, synchronizing, making one universal
    song of existence.


   
    Written by Diane Buccheri

    Photograph © OCEAN Magazine


    Read the Full Article







  

   ARCTIC ICE


   In the Beaufort Sea, 2,500 kilometers (1,560 miles) north of Vancouver, British Columbia,
   the bright red icebreaker Amundsen thunders through the icepack. The wind chill is
   -57 Celsius (-71 Fahrenheit), and in winter the wan orange sun lies low over the horizon,
   like the afterglow of an apocalypse, providing no warmth at all.

   The Canadian icebreaker is on a 16 month polar odyssey, measuring the effects of
   climate change at the circumpolar flaw lead, the place in the Arctic where
   permanent, multi-year ice meets with 1 year shore-fast ice. I have joined 40 French 
   speaking crewmembers, all from Quebec, and 40 polar scientists from 10 countries,
   for the 3 week voyage.

   Here there are no waves, only a blinding white icepack extending in all directions,
   like a mournful unending desert, riven by crevasses and pressure ridges. Under the
   effects of tides and wind, the ice is in constant, barely perceptible movement.


   Written by George Tombs

   Photograph © George Tombs


   Read the Full Article











  

   Songs in the Key of Sea


   She sits on a cliff overlooking the vast Pacific Ocean. Below, her son rides the waves on a surfboard.

   She watches.

   She trusts.

   She listens.

   The waves her son so thrills in crash upon the daunting rocks, tossed and frothing. Grabbing at the sand in their rush back to
   Mother Ocean, pebbles and shells scatter and chink, shift and tinkle. Here, there is a largeness so large we can’t quite grasp
   it, put words to it. Here there is inward peering, introspection and reflection, exposure, recognition. We feel the world widening,
   the horizon expanding, a timelessness, and a self-recognition. Here where there is everything come from mountaintops and sky,
   our deep consciousness surfaces, revealed only to us.
  
   A moment in time speaks forever. Here, where land slips into surf, we grasp what we can nowhere else.

   In this rounding of the spirit and soul in the waves, she hears music. She hears its patterns and shapes, hears entire songs. A
   wave crashes. Pebbles and shells chink. She hears all the notes, all the notes of music. Is this her unconscious becoming
   conscious, an opening and drawing out? Or is it a channeling? A message, universal, certainly feeling divine.

   Here, in these moments she leaps the gap between her lifelong love of nature and her lifelong love of music. Or is there
   no leap at all? The leap only exists in our minds, in our perception of the here and now, the material, what we can prove
   exists with our five senses. So much more exists.



   Written by Diane Buccheri and Kimberly Ford

   Photograph © Kim Kavish


   Read the Full Story
  







  


   MAN & MANATEE


   "Within the congregation, I count more than 20 sedentary animals. Plump bodies of gray mass clustered together, limbs
   touching perhaps for the sake of warmth. Only gentle gestures among the idle creatures suggest a common interest:
   conserve energy. At the Three Sisters Springs near Crystal River in Citrus County, Florida, the water temperature remains
   a consistent 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius). Here, the Florida manatee, Trichechus manatus latirostris, a
   subspecies of the West Indian manatee, finds a well known wintering haven in the tepid waters of the natural spring.

   At Crystal River during the cold season, dozens of tourists are within an arm’s reach away, omnipresent with one of nature’s
   most placid species. Some of the inquisitive animals do not mind. Some of the overzealous tourists get too close. Man and
   nature co-exist here and the tale has the promise of success, pending sound conservation and a decrease in threats that
   continually reduce manatee numbers around Florida."

   As Neil Osborne visits manatee habitats and counts them with experts and conservationists, he questions, "Can man and
   manatee co-exist?" 


   Written by Neil Ever Osborne

   Photograph © Neil Ever Osborne, www.neileverosborne.com


   Read the Full Article
  










And so much more!