Content Amongst the Changes

Sitting at Blue Ridge Mountain beach I look upon the ocean. It is far in the distance. I can really only sense that it is there. Like I know deep down it is out there, visible only on a very clear day. Yet, when I look out, I swear I can see it. As clearly as the clouds that float above, I know the waves float out yonder.

I sit in the garden listening to my Great-Great Grandmother speaks with adoration of the days of her youth. The stories she tells, they are a different kind of ocean tale, not ones of daring adventures on the ocean; rather like a tale from long ago, with the ocean as a trusted companion. At some points in her life, it took only five minutes to get to the beach! She was never a surfer or way finder; she simply enjoyed looking at the ocean, and being near it, dreaming of the possibilities, and feeling the warm sand on her body.

Gran grew up on the Golden Coast, which has long disappeared. The Great California Earthquake rocked thousands of square miles of the West coast into the Pacific Ocean creating an island un resembling of its yesteryears. The days of her youth are in the past. She lived in the era of Route One Highway, California’s pride and joy as far as scenic trips go. She got to see it. Ride cars, that used gasoline on the cliffs of the coast and see elephant seals making a home on the shallow beaches. Along Coast Highway there used to be a castle, called Hearst Castle, built for a loved one and forever abandoned to tourism. I am told you can still see the castle fragments on underwater diving excursions.

Even when Gran moved to the East Coast, she could still visit the Outer Banks and travel up and down the Chesapeake Bay, and get to see two sides of land! They would go four wheeling on nearly pristine land and stay in houses built on stilts! Wherever Gran went, there was water. She went on cruise ships through the Mediterranean eating all along the coast as she went. She flew to India for the Holi festival then found herself leaving on a ship to go experience the Great Barrier Reef.

Once my Gran’s son grew to be sixteen, she surprised him with a trip around the world! She had saved all the money she could her whole life with that as her goal. She wanted to give him life long experiences that could shape how he views the world and interacts with people. She wanted him to have fond memories of life when he was with her; he does. She was the kind of woman that believed nothing was too big or too small if you could dream it. That’s one thing I love about her, she just has a free spirited trust that anything is possible.

For now, I spend my days taking care of Gran. She is getting older, she’s well over one hundred, and although she has friends and family everywhere she turns on her homestead I wanted to soak up this time with her. I wanted to come live here, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, looking over the ever growing ocean and enjoy what she worked so hard to build for her legacy. It is so special to have your Great-Great Grandmother in your life. A story not many people get to relate to, one I am grateful for.

It’s amazing, that even here, in the mountains, the water has followed Gran. Now, she looks out unto the Ocean each and every day. Just waiting for a ship to pass, a horn to sound, or a dolphin to jump. We are not quite that close, yet she knows its happening, not far off in the distance.

For Gran, if the sun is out, she is out with it and most likely, near the water. She told me once that she realized she’s only truly happy when she’s in the sunshine. She did not realize she had anxiety until she got a job outside. All of a sudden, I guess some of her dread and worry lifted from her body with more fresh air and sunshine, and she realized! Never stopped working outside after that. Plus, she’s one of the happiest people I know.

Every morning, Gran and I walk to Shenandoah beach, right around the corner from our house. It used to be an inland freshwater river, yet has turned into a half salt water river because the ocean is so close now. We pick up trash for a few hours each day. She tells me stories of weekend drives with her mother and father, going on roller coasters, and the wild times her and her best girlfriend Frini would have. She’s a California girl at heart, and most of her stories involve the ocean. Those were the happiest moments of her childhood. The moments that always seemed to erase the hard times her family faced regularly. She has long since forgiven the hard times, and is even grateful for them at this point in her hundred and eight years of life

After she realized in the early part of the century that the “creek was gonna rise,” she bought a home in the mountains near her favorite town Sperryville, Virginia and left the coast life. At the time, it was a small mountain town with about 3208 population. It had one coffee shop, one apothecary, a brewery, a distillery, a craft shop and a pizza place with an artisan meat market. The first time she stepped foot in that town was when she was pregnant, and she says she always knew that was where she was supposed to be. She just ignored it for a decade or so chasing other dreams along the way. Later on, she did move there and she hasn’t looked back since.

First thing she did, was start a garden, the one we sit in today. Eventually, she began raising rabbits and poultry for meat, sheep for textiles, and set up her solar and wind farm for energy. It took her three decades to get it going, however, by the time the earthquakes started happening, she had just about finished the property. Perfect timing because she had just become a grandma for the first time also! Appropriate, because she had bult this land hoping to give her family a place to come home to, and they always did. She invited her children, and their friends and family to live on her land when it became clear “life would never be the same”. They came on their own time and she always welcomed them with open arms.

Gran never shamed anyone for living their life. She made some very “wild” and unpopular choices in her life and they always seemed to work out alright. She says she always followed her soul. Sometimes she would go on wild round about chases for a message or spiritual awakening, only to end up right where she started. Gran was never bothered by this. She just thought that it meant she hadn’t paid attention to the journey the first time, so hopefully by the second time, she was paying attention. She was funny like that, always had a reason! Still does really.

Not long after she started inviting family, the ocean became her front porch once again. The ice caps had the biggest melt in the century and brought the ocean back to us. Over the last three decades, what used to be a 4 hour trip can now be seen about forty miles in the distance.

She is a very content woman now-a-days. She says she’s seen “just about all there is to see at this point,” and that it took her a long time to feel at peace with being exactly where she is. She seems to enjoy doing the same things each day: waking up, drinking her tea, and reading a book in her garden that looks outward toward a distance ocean. She has traveled the world, met thousands of people, been on daring adventures, built a homestead from the ground up, served her higher power and those she’s loved.

Now, she is just grateful to be alive, sitting exactly where she is. She says, on clear days, she can hear the dolphins in the wake of a ship and that she will become one, one day.