Being Adrift Can Sometimes Bring You Home

I find calm in nature. Many of us do. But this past year it’s been a challenge to feel like my feet were on firm ground. To trust the cycles of the seasons and know that everything can, and will, come full circle. Will somehow make sense.

My instinct for self-care always drives me to water.

Water is our birthplace, not only from our mother’s wombs but from the oceans where life began. It soothes us in ways we’re only now beginning to understand. In a time of uncertainty and everyday chaos, it beckons to us in rhythmic swells and utter stillness to find our center. To return home.

This past Christmas, I had bought my grandson a SUP, or stand-up paddleboard. I knew full well that it would be a “shared” gift, especially since he and I are water-loving buddies. Every summer we can get together, we hunt down a new lake, small enough to avoid the noisy beach crowds; calm enough to paddle out for long, lazy hours without being capsized by waves.

Our last joint trip took us to Otsego Lake in east central New York, a slender blue-green glacial remnant surrounded by emerald hills. Cooperstown, most known as a destination for baseball fans, sits at its southern tip. Early on a Sunday morning as the sun began to break through misty clouds, I walked the SUP out into the shallow water and began to paddle, slow strokes that barely made a sound.

On a paddleboard, you’re intrinsically exposed to the water in a visceral way. You feel every rise and fall of a wave and the intense energy that could sweep you under. You can smell the water that splashes over the board, a fresh, unspoiled scent that belongs to pristine lakes fed by melting mountain snow. Nothing stands between you and this elemental force except a narrow plank that keeps you afloat.

A gentle current carries me without effort, so I simply cradle the paddle on my lap and close my eyes. For this moment, everything in the world is still. There’s no bad news; no political craziness; no worldly disruption.

There’s only the water moving as it does, day after day, millennia after millennia. There is a sense of the eternal here. And history. Eras having passed. Ice Ages.

I breathe with the rhythm of the water and simply drift. My clenched muscles relax. My fear-induced thoughts are hushed. Wallace J. Nichols,* a marine biologist who launched the Blue Mind Movement and authored the book, Blue Mind, describes this as a state we experience that is meditative and “characterized by calm, peacefulness, unity, and a sense of general happiness and satisfaction with life in the moment.” Water inspires and influences us, he writes, because of the neurological connections made by the human brain as it evolved. We have acquired blue minds because of every association encountered by the human species through time, from water as a food source, irrigation, transportation, and healing, to an unforgiving power that can be harnessed and channeled for our survival.

We can’t escape our blue mind, but we can ignore it. We can let stress and anxiety overwhelm us and resist seeking out those places that return us to a place of centeredness. We can see water only as a place for recreation and not as a soul salve: an elemental mother that offers respite from despair.

Here’s my prescription for the chaos-weary: take a paddle in hand, and whether in a canoe, a kayak, or on a paddleboard, go out and meet water as your sacred cleansing pool. Let your blue mind click into gear and be in the moment. Know you are home.

*Dr. Wallace J Nichols (1967-2024), was a distinguished marine biologist and passionate conservationist whose writing and teaching helped others to understand why the ocean made them happy. He was known for signing off his letters with the phrase, “I wish you water.”

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Image by Frederick Shaw on Unsplash

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