ABALONE SHELLS
Point Arena is a tiny seaside town on the west coast of California. It has the cutest bakery which is worth seeking out and an odd assortment of other curious stores, as well as a safari preserve where my kids got more than they bargained for looking eye to eye with a giraffe who wanted a kiss! When our family visits, we always end up at the cove by the end of Moat Creek.
Both my husband and eldest son are obsessed with rock pooling. Rock pooling is exploring the tide pools left by the waves washing in and out from the ocean. The rocks can be dangerously sharp and also incredibly slippery when covered with sea weed. It’s especially exciting to rock pool with the threat of having to find as much variety of sea life as possible in those few precious hours before you get washed away by the incoming tide.
One visit, we hung around the cove for two mornings in a row, exploring all over, and as we were leaving on the second day I heard a woman excitedly say, “There’s another one…….and another one!” We couldn’t help but stare and to our amazement she was pointing out massive abalone shells. We thought she must be standing in the only place they were, but when we started moving towards her, she looked at us and marveled, “They’re everywhere!”
And in that moment, having been solely fixated on finding sea creatures, we collectively had an epiphany. It was like the scales fell from our eyes. All at once we realized that we too were surrounded by huge abalone shells!
It was the most extraordinary discovery – something that was so hidden in camouflage, but now so present and obvious and in plain sight once we identified our first shell. It made me think of how you buy a car you’ve rarely noticed on the road and then, surprisingly, they seem to be everywhere.
When I went through a tough time emotionally a few years ago I felt God say to me, “Go outside each day and take one photo of something beautiful.” And the first photo was all it took. That first day I headed to my backyard and I saw the first beauty: auburn autumn leaves on our Black Tupelo tree in the morning sunlight. The second day: dew drops on the tips of branches. The third day: first dump of snow on the mountains in the distance. The fourth: my kids jumping on the trampoline under a double rainbow. I found myself lingering longer each time because just noticing the first beauty led to the discovery of so many more.
How could I not see these beauties when my emotions were swallowing me? It took me getting outside my own head and into my back yard so I could begin to ‘see’.
At the beach cove, we would have missed the joy of the find and the beauty of each camouflaged shell found had we not seen the first shell. Each one was unique in size, pattern, color and the way it glistened in the sun. We would have been content with eels, crabs, starfish and anemones that squirt you, but once we knew there was just one abalone beauty, we could not stop ourselves from discovering more.
It took seeing one….just one.