The pull of the ocean, the sense of renewal

Imiss the pull of the ocean, but it’s more than that. It’s the feeling the Bay of Fundy evokes, the stories it reveals — of dinosaur bones wedged in seaside cliffs, of ancient rainforests, populated with long-extinct trees. Of hundreds of millions of years of change recorded in stone, that you can trip over on the beach.

It’s the life that teems in those waters today. It’s the world’s largest tidal range, reliable in its work, lifting boats from the ocean floor, twice a day, and gently lowering them back down, twice a day. It’s the smell of brine and fish and seaweed, baking under the beating sun.

It’s the history of lumbering and shipbuilding, the echo of the past, the beaches once alive with sound — the din of hammers, the shouts of workers, the cheers of a ship in port — now replaced with waves lapping ashore.

It’s the storms that rise biblically from distant reaches. The tide pooling in, papering over the crevices and caves, until the basin is full once more, smooth and still.

On my first visit as a child, I was more interested in the possibility of a pizza lunch than appreciating the history and nature that surrounded us as we pulled into the parking lot of lighthouse after lighthouse, and I shuffled barefoot across hot concrete to peer over the edge of the fence, briefly taking in the vista, only to return to the back seat, where a Game Boy waited.

I’ve been fortunate to return since, to visit in summer and fall, as winter creeps in and the sea swells and arrives in thundering crashes, like a glacier calving at your feet.

It is easy, when the tide returns, to imagine it has travelled around the world and back again. To feel a connection to something else, to everyone else.

Maybe that’s what I’m missing. The sense of renewal that Fundy provides. The rejuvenation the sea offers. The reminder that change is not only necessary but inevitable and whatever follows in its wake, however reminiscent of what once was, will be altogether different.