I took a walk along the shore, the wind whipping my hair about my face, the sea spray stinging my lips with the taste of salt. Seagulls soared and circled overhead, diving to land among their squawking peers squabbling at the rubbish bins for scraps of yesterday’s lunches left behind by brave picnickers undaunted by inclement weather. Tom, Dick and Harry Gull were fighting for possession of a fried potato, but where was Jonathon? Of course, he had far better things to do… as did I as well.

I am weary and wary of fried potatoes. I certainly have no wish to fight over them. Wherever Jonathon was, I was too… walking along the shore in the biting breeze, savouring the touch of nature through my skin and speaking to my soul. As the days get cooler and the white-caps appear to roughen up the harbour, it is good to get outside, to have the mental cobwebs blown away. Peeling off shoes and socks I stand up to the ankles in the edges of the bubbling surf, the tide pulling back against my heels, the sand tunnelling under my feet. I am invigorated.

It seems I cannot avoid the stress of modern life. Attempting to reduce as much of it from around me, it beats down the door in news reports and incessant demands for my response. I am not immune to it as I was. I cannot shake it off as I once did. It resonates with an accumulation of life’s experiences until the tremors become jarring jolts of pain and I need to get away, to walk the beach, to touch home base within my soul and seek solace in the embrace of Mother Nature.

My family laughed at me, but kindly so. We had driven through downtown Detroit, Michigan, and come to a safe tree-lined place well away from there and stopped. I leapt out of the car and flung my arms around a tree. There is too much that is horrid made by man; too much plastic and waste and ugliness. It is through our skin that we learn to love and be loved, the most basic sense of them all, to touch and be touched. I held my father’s hand as he died, and then my mother’s when she died too. When all else is going, sight and sound, breath and life, to feel through one’s skin becomes primary; the point where personal boundaries meet and become defined, where contact is made and life is real. To touch the wind, the salt, a tree… Mother Nature please touch me.

This text - The Songs of Bilitis - is in the public domain in the United States because it was not renewed at the US Copyright Office in a timely fashion as required by law at the time. It may not be in the public domain in other countries. These files may be used for any non-commercial purpose, provided this notice of attribution is left intact.