Wild Apocalypse
“Apocalypse” (noun): revelation
from the Greek ἀποκάλυψις (apo = “un-” + kălŭ́ptō = “to cover”), an uncovering, a lifting of the veil, a coming to light of what was hidden, a sudden insight, an exposure. This is very different than the popular understanding of this term. End of one world, maybe, but always the start of another one.
Out here at the shore, apocalypse is a very literal thing. Every day twice a day, the sea falls away to reveal a vast intertidal dreamscape... a world that is neither "land" nor "sea", but something in between.
This is a liminal space, eternal and yet always transient: exposed only for a time, and then the tide returns. This rhythm of ebb and flow defines the reality of this place. And it is unending. The apocalypse is continual.
The Wild Apocalypse of Agate Beach
This is a story about the rise and fall of the tide against a particular stretch of shoreline. It is also a story about the rise and fall of everything everywhere (the rhythm between light and dark, summer and winter, in-breath and out-breath…) but I will do my best to keep us focused on the subject at hand.
The subject at hand is a place called Agate Beach, or on the maps Agate Passage Preserve, a beach situated on the northwest corner of Bainbridge Island in Washington State. The island lies at the center of the vast network of channels and islands known as the Salish Sea, one of the largest and most biodiverse inland seas in the world. Across the water is the town of Suquamish, with the whole area being the ancestral home of the Suquamish people, a name translated as "people of the clear salt water". The namesake clearwater refers to specifically these waters here, flowing in through the pass...
Agate Pass is the pinnacle of this place: a narrow gap between island and mainland, a funnel through which the sea pours back and forth twice a day. Waves dance across the surface driven by local winds while deeper currents push in from open ocean. Sunlight glistens off the water. Streams trickle in from every direction to join the rising and falling waters of the bay.
Along the edges, broadly sloping shorelines extend into the distance in either direction. The air is filled with the smell of spring plants and salt sea.
Land is adorned with woods, bluffs, big houses with their sea walls and staircases… and the chirps of sparrows and chickadees, the cackling squee of a bald eagle above, the almost mechanical chitterings of a hummingbird… and below, tracks of coyote, raccoon, squirrel.
Sea is adorned with seals and sea lions and otters, buffleheads and geese and mallards, and underneath the surface... a vast multiplicity…
All of this I am telling you, excitedly, as we sit in the car driving to the beach, and we’re almost there. Now here’s the roundabout, and the sharp right turn, and up along the track to the parking spot, gears shifting, engine quieting, seatbelts unbuckling, doors opening and closing, adjusting of backpacks, and, now, we are ready.
Let’s proceed down the trail.