The day after I took this photo, the boats marooned on the shore had increased to three. Sadly, I didn't have my camera, because the three boats on the beach was surreal and without explanation. When I saw the lifeguard, I asked him what had happened. The lifeguard said, "These are the boats that weren't properly anchored." He points to the opposite direction and farther down the beach where another sailboat was grounded into the shore. Two days earlier a might storm had struck.
The storm had battered and tested the anchored boats. The push, the pull, the yank had proved too much for those not properly anchored. "When they loosen during the day, we jump on the jet skis and pull the boats away from the shore where they're a danger. We pull them back out to sea and drop the anchor. Hopefully their owners find them. These boats came in at night."
I just started listening to a book a student highly recommended. 12 Rules for Life, an Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B Peterson, requires intent listening and rewinding for phrases that strike me as needing to be listened to at least twice. I'm only one chapter into the book, but the intersection of the boat displacement, the lifeguard's explanation "The boats weren't properly anchored," and the author's theories, are coming together like an eclipse of the sun and the moon.
Having missed the last total eclipse that could have been witnessed by just a short drive and a little inconvenience, after listening to friends praise the moment as a miraculous life changing moment, I'm paying attention to the alignment of the coincidences in my life. I'm paying attention to the anchor metaphor, and an author's words, and not wanting to miss out twice on a once in a lifetime connection, we've booked a trip for a 2020 total eclipse, so we don't miss another chance of a lifetime. Yet, I'm thinking those opportunities, in actuality, might come every day...we just don't see the magnitude or how the slight repositioning might change entitrely the trajectory of our life. The little adjustments of one or two degrees that at first don't seem to matter, but as we keep going, as the years pass, the adjustment lands us on the opposite side of the bay--just like the boats—the ones that weren't anchored properly.
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