At high tide I walk amongst the ancient elder drift and wait for the call of some lost ancestor. Sometimes the wind whistles through a narrow opening and I find my gaze turning towards something or someone unseen. 

I’m looking for a place to lay my body down. Let me tell it another way: I look for giant grooved and flattened driftwood shaped like otherworldly ancestors. These great-great-great-great-grandmother trees beckon, their branches open to the sea. “Come here, my daughter. Rest awhile. Lay your body down.” 

I am lulled by the tangle of ancient roots. My inhalations hold longer at the top. Rest longer at the bottom. I slow down. I become buoyant in an amniotic sea, an ancestral ocean. I call out, but hear nothing in return. But somehow, in this liminal space, on the tip of my tongue, I taste the salt of belonging to others who have dreamed before me.

It reminds me that I am not the first of my kind. I come from a long line of deep-sea people. But still, I am aware of a cavernous ache. A phantom mother swims beside me. 

A grieving killer whale mother sings her sorrow-songs of unbearable loss. And what of the baby whale? She doesn’t know the songs yet. Doesn’t recognize the whistles and clicks of her kin. Echolocation only works if you know who you’re looking for.

Still, I return to the rocky shores and fill my pockets with agates of light to help me find myself. I pick up arms-length driftwood shaped just so—hold it upright and imagine the faces of my ancestors. I come from a long line of ebb and flow. Loss and gain. Birth. Separation. Search. And learning to belong to myself.