What Makes Something Possible

A few weeks ago I had the chance to visit a small undeveloped island that my mom helped protect in the 80's.

It's a spot I've spent my whole life visiting, and she before us. Watching my kids play here this time though, I was struck with the realization that but for the work of my mom and others, none of us would be able to jump into these waters, walk this beach, or look out over the ocean from this angle. Yes, technically since it's an ocean beach it would still be legally public, but we've all seen how that plays out.

The stories seem especially prevalent this summer - coastal property owners going to great lengths to block the public from accessing the ocean and using beaches. And while the American legal history is a bit long and convoluted (going back to Roman Law and British Common Law that arrived with the colonists), in both Indigenous and Colonial approaches, the oceans are shared resources, not something only for the elite few.

My mom said once that she thought the reason protecting this place worked is that they didn't know they had taken on an impossible task. Those who worked together to make it happen were a jumble of perspectives but with one singular goal - keep this place accessible to all.

Everyone has a different relationship to and with nature. Some see it as a commodity, some as rejuvenation, some as a relative, some barely see it. Nature is both far away and in the inch next to us, the beautiful and the terrible.

But the bottom line is that we don't exist without nature. And we don't exist without it because we are part of it. Not something special and above, but a piece of the whole. We've evolved to breath the sighs of giants aka trees (@cryptonaturalist paraphrased) and also of the very tiniest ocean plants (phytoplankton). And while we're a part of nature, we also seem bent on living in a way that ultimately wreaks havoc on the earth and on our own species.

And so standing on the beach in a place that might have looked so different, I was reminded that our actions matter. No matter how big or how small.

And sometimes not knowing that what you're trying to do is impossible makes all the difference.

Lindsey

Mom of two, ocean enthusiast, Eight Legged Octopus founder.

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