By KAREN MADORIN
For nine years I lived within five miles of the Pacific Ocean. I breathed its salt air, I lived for invigorating breezes that freshened every morning and evening. As often as I could, I stood with toes in foaming water and looked West into forever. Standing there, I saw infinity roll away and then roll back on the white wash of one returning wave after another. I thought I could never live anywhere I couldn’t see and hear the continual rising and falling of the sea.
Surprise, life inevitably changes.
It wasn’t long after I paused at the Pacific’s edge that last time, wondering how I could survive away from it that I discovered the answer to my question. After my family moved to Oklahoma, I reeled and foundered, trying to adjust and find a way to part from the ocean I loved.
For months, I clung to memories, sniffed bags filled with seaweed scented shells, and listened to audio tapes that replicated the sea’s pounding thunder.
After a spell, I began to look around. A college friend lived in a balcony apartment overlooking a wheat field. One day I sat on the porch and watched wind move through a ripening wheat field. Those of you who’ve done the same know what I saw. An ocean, a swelling and falling ocean of grain rolling over the prairie. Once again I watched infinite waves roll in, one right after the other. My fascination with the scene before me puzzled this friend who’d grown up on a farm. However, former dwellers of a land near the sea recognize what I found that day.
Years later, more by far than I ever spent living near the ocean, I still miss watching rising and falling foam-capped grey-green water. I miss the tides, the waxing and waning of water and land. I miss the ocean’s roar, the feel of salt-tang wind against my face, the discovery of delicate shells beneath my feet.
But I no longer miss them too much. I discovered I live in an ancient sea bed. I find shells in pastures, limestone rocks, on roadsides, and on hillsides near my home. I find ammonite and clam imprints in the thousands of limestone posts fencing this region. Even better, I found the sea again.
Walking country roads of Kansas, I need listen only a short while before I hear the echo of ancient waves carried on the wind. When I stand on a hill overlooking somebody’s wheat field, I imagine myself perched at the edge of infinity listening to a roaring tide pour in. Nearby, wave after wave of rolling wheat reminds me that eons ago, this land where I now stand teemed with sea creatures great and small.
As I walk face first into the wind, I hear an ocean within as my own blood pounds and pulses in tune to the clamor without. This one-time child of the Pacific stands rooted in another ancient seabed, feeling eternity throb on a Kansas hillside.
Karen Madorin is a retired teacher, writer, photographer, outdoors lover, and sixth-generation Kansan.