Teachings of a Tidal Pool

I am fairly sure that my earliest memories of the Seaside where on the South coast of Kwa Zulu Natal between Scottburgh and Clansthal. The Blue Marlin Hotel was the iconic family getaway with a kids dining room as a main attraction which was not so much for the children’s entertainment, but rather for some adult sanity. As a parent myself now, I have fond memories of enjoying an uninterrupted bottle of wine while the mayhem of a miniature meal is consumed in a separate environment of controlled chaos.

I learnt to hold my breath in this haven for holiday makers, as on Saturdays, the Hotel Entertainment staff would unload a few cases of tinned beverages into the swimming pool. We children were allowed one dive each to gather what we could, and then bask in the sun with our liquid loot. I learned that if the labels on the tins read Lion Lager or Castle Lager, they would fetch a much higher price with the adults on the sun loungers around the pool willing to pay a long and lazy dollar for an afternoon aperitif. The monies earned from a good dive could last well into the week with cold bottles of Cokes and Fanta orange from the local tuck shop. I am still convinced that no Coca Cola has ever tasted better than it did out of a thick glass bottle in the early nineteen Seventies.

For most of the rest of my days there, I remember spending hours exploring the rock and tidal pools.

Many decades later, these beautiful coastal features still hold an extraordinary fascination, and not unsurprisingly I have found myself in an equally engaging relationship with some unique characters in a gathering fittingly called: Tidal Pool.

In a recent on-line meeting, one of our calm and colourful inhabitants held us all spellbound with an obvious yet refreshingly new analogy of who we might be as a gathering called Tidal Pool. With deep gratitude to Sarah Campbell-Watts for the beauty of the analogy and some humble apologies if I spin the thinking out of the intertidal-zone boundaries of reason, it is an analogy which really caused me to hold my breath. This time not to dive for adult beverages, but to delve deep for a different treasure in reflection, relation and resonance.

On my very first opportunity to walk along the coastline since lock down, I wandered down to the rocks to think more deeply and to contemplate the gift of this intriguing idea.

I watched as wave after wave rolled in and observed that while Tidal pools offer some comfort and protection from the harshness of a wild open ocean, that guard is never guaranteed. High tides arrive and Low tides leave and each one brings or takes something with them. Fresh, nutrient enriched water splashes in along with a range of new possibilities and interesting pool partners – each of whom is unique. Change happens with every new wave and change is embraced quickly as coastal chaos is restored to a new order.

I stopped for a moment to stare through a narcissistic reflection, and started to notice the enormous detail and abundant diversity in even the smallest of rock pools. Soft velvety tentacles of a pastel hued sea anemone lay next to and seemed to lick the sharp spines of dark coloured sea urchins with the caress of a hundred tongues. Both were made more beautiful by the presence of the other. Perfectly plump pumpkin shells lay delicately wedged in a whelkcome(?) of whelks, and the blend was a mixture of robust rigidity with a finite fragility. A curious yet cautious rock wrasse peered out from under his sheltering rock, a crab sidled sideways for a better grip on the iridescent green weed and away from the cascading waterfall of the last wave of disruption, and the shell home of a shuffling hermit relocated without the need of a permit.

These ecosystems are vibrantly alive in their vitality and in their vulnerability.

In my youth I might have stayed there all day. As time has marched on, my ankles have become an accident waiting to happen around the uneven ground of an intertidal zone, and with the day unfolding as a perfect opportunity for nine holes of golf at a quite different church, I walked back up to higher ground. As I did so, I became aware of less and less life in the tidal pools the further away I walked from the action. The outliers seemed to be stagnant with an oily film on the waters still surface and some old sea foam still decorating the sunburned rocks. There was little movement, if any at all, and there was a desperate drabness and an air of despair to the isolated inaction of the higher pools.

I looked back at the energy of the lower pools. It didn’t seem to be present when there was a lack of connection the further away I moved from the action.

I played a great nine holes. My mind was clear of the usual mess of swing thoughts, and I focused on three key insights and a range of still developing questions.

1. Could I see the Tidal Pool of my own family as a place of refuge, but not a place of perennially padded protection? How will my children ever know the magic of the sea if they live always in the confines of the same certainties of a privileged pool?

2. How will I continue to see that inclusivity adds way more than it can ever take away? I would like to be awash with new ideas and options as I face my own waves of change, and those will only come from a celebratory welcoming of diversity.

3. To stay truly alive, I must remain connected. Like any ecosystem that is shut off in isolation, I will die if I don’t receive, and I will die if I don’t give back. I may be high up in the hierarchy, but it can get lonely, and besides, the fight for oxygen is more intense with every ambition of altitude.

In the spirit of an open pool, please take any of these thoughts with you.

And of course, I will be greatly enriched by any you might choose to leave behind?

Steve Hall

With gratitude to Sarah Campbell-Watts for her wave of wisdom.

P.S. My ‘Uncle’ Butch - Godfather, Marine Biologist and Philosopher amongst many other things, has thrown a few more pebbles into the pool as he so often does, and here is another ripple of realization which will keep my mind focused on flow and not sidelined by swing thoughts.

4. Rock pools all face times of plenty and times of stress. There is a long-term seasonality to these swings and an everyday rhythm to the tides. They could be plundered by poachers and punished by pollution. Could I practice the same balance of tolerance and resilience in the cycles of my own uncertain life?

5. …

(The ellipsis is there for further contributions. Like a healthy Tidal Pool it remains open to new ideas and fresh waves of input. Please add abundantly – our ecosystem will be all the richer for your thought!)