Break of Blue in a Land of Green

“Whoa.” This phrase isn’t exactly the detailed, descriptive breakdown it should be for an introduction, but it is a moment that everyone now reading these words can share. We’ve all had at least one time in our lives where we’ve looked up something so beautiful, so captivating that were temporarily blown back and all words in the English language are knocked from our minds, scattered and windblown, tangled within each other, clattering about and left face down like a game of fifty two pick up. All except for one. Whoa.

This was one of these moments.

It was quite a few years ago, from this date to then about five years past in the intermission. My mother, brother, and I were traveling across the emerald isle, beginning in Dublin and gradually curving around south as we maneuvered all around southern Ireland, the parts of Ireland that actually belong to the Irish anyways. The emerald isle is a suiting moniker, it seemed everywhere that we went a green so lush both proceeded and pursued us, both leading and chasing as we traveled the country. The greenest, most fertile valley in the states would seem grey in comparison too the hue that spread across the country and in that distant memory even the skies are remembered as green, as if the heavens themselves were jealous of the ground below, mimicking the beauty below with mirrors above.

Despite the all encompassing and surrounding beauty, green was not the color that inspired my loss for words. I was standing a few miles out from the Atlantic Ocean and the scene was breath taking, the blue amazing when contrasted with the all encompassing green, and in this memory of a memory it would seem that those were the only two colors that even registered in my mind. “Oh would you look at my husband,” Anne said with a smile that was quite stunning for an older woman, “Out there like he’s got something to prove.” Anne and her husband, Jack, were part of our tour group and had been the two most constant of the people we had talked to while on our trip. The couple was an older one, in their late sixties, but their relationship was not, as they were actually traveling abroad as part of their honeymoon, and it reflected in their banter, which was young and playful, much teasing and laughter. It was a young love. Ann was nice, with short cropped blonde hair and piercing eyes the color of salt water and a slightly playful sense of humor that was shadowed by her husband’s extremely playful sense of humor and deep, barrel bellied laughs.

Jack, who was walking along the outcropping of rocks right before the ocean, reminded me even more of the figure I used to compare him with: the fishermen in the yellow rain coat on the labels of those packaged sea food containers, minus the raincoat, obviously. He captured that type of character flawlessly, and walking near the ocean only played further into my comparisons of him. Inspired by a whim that comes with youth, I quickly took the last sip out of a glass bottle of water I’d brought with me and walked down the hill from the deck of our hotel to join him. Seeing me, he called out “Not bad in the balance department for being an old man.”

I laughed, “You’re only as young as you pretend to be.” Another laugh, and we both looked out at the ocean together, watching as the waves crashed against the rocks a few dozen feet or so from where we stood. Another whim and I was off, hopping from pointed tipped rock to pointed tipped rock as I grew closer to the water’s edge, watching my feet carefully and noticing the darkening color as the rocks grew wetter form the waves. I had decided that I was going to catch the green and the blue, all in one go. Coming up the rim, I looked down into the water. Bits of rock and earth could clearly be seen floating in the ocean, however these were not what grabbed my attention.

What was grabbing it was the outcropping of rocks that had been impossible to see from where I had formerly stood, next to Jack. These rocks stood out like the giant teeth of the ocean, prehistoric and ancient, unmoving yet still intimidating. To make matters even more interesting, the water that crashed upon the rock I now stood had made it wet and slippery beyond comparison with those from before, being so constantly bombarded by waves that the water never really had a chance to slip back into its giver, not exactly a great standing point when seeing the jaws that will claim you if you were to lack the balance of my mischievous older friend. Still, I already teetered on the edge of an island, I couldn’t turn back now. Lowering myself to a squatting position, I reached down and placed my bottle in the ocean.

My timing played against me. Another wave seemed to rush forth like the oceans own tongue, and while not getting much more than the sleeve of my bottle carrying hand wet, it did wash up on my rock, and get the hand I had perched for balance, already accommodating for the slope of the rock and the water worn smoothness of its surface. Mix in my initial surprise at the wave with the added difficulty to my grip, and I was in trouble. My hand slipped, and I waved my arms backwards in wind mills, trying to compensate, keeping the death clutch on my bottle, its contents rolling inside the glass like a mini storm playing out. For a moment I felt that weightlessness sensation when your teetering on the edge of the fall, the lightlessness that makes it feel almost just like you have the ability to fly, and could spring up at any moment and take to the skies, fleeing your precarious position, but your instinct tells you that you cannot, and your feet remain firmly on the ground, except that now the ground might not remain as loyal to your feet as your feet have to it, and I felt myself slip ever so slightly. This slight slip set off a wave of panic through my core, as I remembered the ancient jaws in front of me, seeming much more alive than when I had first glimpsed them, still waiting and leering at me.

I fell…though not in the way I had feared. I landed harshly backwards, onto my own rock, and stared with a new respect as the waves receded away, once seeming vicious and predatory with me in their sights, sure to swallow me whole, now seeming disinterested and oblivious to my presence all together as they receded back to the mother of us all, the ocean. I sat there for a moment, still in the midst of my surprise, before I looked at my bottle. The hand holding it was clenched, cold, and wet, but the bottle was still there and the tiny storm in the glass world had subsided, the few pieces of earth now spinning lazily inside it.

“You alright there,” Jack, having seen my near spill, called out to me, the normal boisterous voice tinged with worry “Thought you were about take to a dive for a second.” I turned around, and gave him a confident smile even as my heart thudded, waving the bottle in his direction.

“Yeah, me too!” I nervously tried to laugh it off. I turned back around, letting the more honest worry play across my face, looking down at still wobbling legs then looking at my bottle, feeling pride bubble up inside me. Privately, so privately that almost not even I heard it, I added a whisper. “ But it was worth it.”