Let The Wave Say

"If the surface of the ocean is this time that we’re alive;

Then this rising wave in motion, is this moment that we ride.

If you don’t move when it’s moving, then your life leaves you behind.

If you can’t see what it’s doing; trust the wave more than your mind.

When the wave is all around me, I got no other plans;

I just balance through the changes, and let the wave say who I am.

From a thousand miles of water, from the wind beyond belief

Every wave roars out its power, as it rises on the reef

And the high blue wall can break you; you can never fight the sea…

You just learn to let it take you, to the place you want to be

Now the wave is all around me, I got no other plans;

Keep my balance through the changes, let the wave say who I am."
--David Wilcox

Watching Dave again Saturday night brought back sweet memories of 18 years ago in Dallas, when I first got the nerve to talk, one-on-one with a beautiful brunette with blue eyes who a couple years later would become my wife! He once again gave wonderful comments, poetic lyrics, and amazing guitar riffs to a small audience of faithful followers who needed the advice as much as ever. Going to a David Wilcox concert is cheaper than therapy.

One of America's premiere songwriter/singer/songwriters, the poetry in the song above (featured on his album: Reverie ©2010), “Let the Wave Say,” led-off the concert. As usual, this winsome show included a few oldies I remember from the past shows we’ve been lucky enough to see; nevertheless, Saturday the same quality instrumentation and wisdom shined through to all in the audience, even if it was their first show.

His voice and pace were vibrant, clear, and robust and this new gaggle of tunes just as appealing as others from the 1990s we know and love. Sharing the journey with his fans, never too proud to admit he doesn’t have it all figured out, Dave muses on things changing in his life, helping sort out the confusing parts from the ridiculous. The self-parody, “Capt.Wanker” was a delightful admission that Super Dave is just a human like we are. No one likes to give money to a “perfect” person or cause; even a young Adele resonates with all ditched lovers, and David Wilcox has grown up with these groupies; indeed 80% of the enthusiasts at the concert this weekend were the over-40 crowd. David Wilcox is a sober, simpler, erudite version of the post-James Taylor singer-songwriter era.

In this song, “Let the Wave Say,” the words spoke to me in a special way as I try to grapple with the rising tide of change. Our 5 world oceans cover 139.5 million square miles of the world's surface area of 197 million square miles; and excluding insects, 4 fifths (80%) of all species live in the oceans. Even though I am a land-lubber, the metaphor of the ocean is powerful; and if you have ever been crushed under a salty wave it is humbling. One cannot fight the sea. It is one of the reasons I love the novel: Life of Pi, by Yann Martel (Random House/Canada 2001).

As I tweeted last week (Twitter@markpills), art is the free-flow of creativity from deep within; expressing truth often without out words; it can be a song, a painting, sculpture, clay pottery, or photography, just to name some of my favorite. Music says things that other communication does not. Dave's guitar plucks the heart-strings.

Poetry like this resonates over days, crowding-out other thoughts. My mind goes back to the wave today; I don’t see what is going on right now, in fact, I don’t really have a very good plan. The song inspires me to jump on the wave because the worst thing I can do now is let this moment pass me by, missing the opportunity for adventure. The art shows that the song is talking to me directly, in the very first song of the show; so you can imagine that Dave got my attention. Good art is a teacher.

As I focus on the next few months, out into the black unknown; I concentrate on quiet reflection, mindfulness, and waiting on God. Trying hard not to control the wave (I would be foolish to think that), I am learning to let the force of time, future, uncertainty, anxiety, all swirling about me, take me with it, to the place I want to be.

Previously I blogged (Mar. 12, 2012) about underwater panic being deadly to a Scuba diver; however it is also detrimental to a human being caught in a vortex of doubt. All I can do is be obedient, show up, work hard, and keep my balance: in golf the swing is like a metronome; in fishing, you can’t stand-up in the canoe and fall in the water. It's all about balance.

Instead of worrying about what people think about me this time, I am going to let the wave say who I am. Thanks Dave.

©Mark H. Pillsbury

Scuba diving Part IV: The Scientific Method and Infrasonic Warning: "Hey, Mitch is on His Way!"

The Scientific Method and Warnings of Hurricane Mitch


The Webster's® Dictionary defines infrasonic, or infrasound, 
as "1: having or relating to a frequency below the audibility range of the human ear; and 2: utilizing or produced by infrasonic waves or vibrations."

Infrasound emitted by earthquakes, pounding surf, waterfalls, calving of glacial ice, tidal waves, aurora borealis (0.1 - 0.01 Hz), solar flares, solar winds, hurricanes, thunderstorms, the jet stream (30-40Hz), and winds in caverns (20-30 Hz.), effects non-human wildlife and causes natural, instinctive reactions to the acoustics produced by these environmental events. Low-frequency noise (LFN) typically causes animals to flee, hide, or take other protective measures.

The otolithic organs in fish react to a broad range of frequencies, especially infrasonic warnings occurring from a category 5 hurricane (Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale) approaching a day away. Although I am neither a meteorologist or ichthyologist, nor an ichthyologist who would hypothecate about the meteorological effect of a hurricane on fish, I know for sure that this phenomenon exists, and I witnessed it on the barrier reef bordering Belize on October 25, 1998.

Fancy science often gets in the way of common sense. The scientific method is a simple step-by-step process that can be followed naturally, even by non-scientists. If you can remember back to high school it starts with the problem. For my dive partner and me it began on the morning of October 25, 1998 as we walked out to the dive shop on a rustic dock on Ambergris Caye in Belize. Carrie looked at a color weather map printed off an inkjet printer pinned to the back door of the little shack. “What’s that map showing there?” she asked innocently. “Oh, that?” one of the hearty, tanned employees replied sheepishly. “Just a little old picture of the forecast path of Hurricane Mitch, which is category 5 (Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale) btw, and headed this direction in a couple of days!” [not really, the answer was vague]. The first part of the scientific method is to find out exactly what it is you want to learn? We were curious about a map but the bigger questions should have been about the track and effect of Hurricane Mitch. Strike one and strike two.

As eager divers with one last dive left on our schedule that Sunday morning, we went below the surface to observe the beautiful undersea world we spent the week exploring. The second important step in the scientific method is observation. What we saw or did not see as the case may be, was the total absence of wildlife. Like the lonely sheriff, walking deserted streets before the Hole-in-the-Wall gang hits town, all the usual suspects were gone; no shark, snapper, reef fish, trigger-fish, nobody.

The dive plan was to hunt up some lobster and bake them on the beach but we decided to come back to the surface because all the lobster had left town. My distinct, scientific recollection was that all wildlife was absent in a world teaming with them just days before; and upon arriving back at the dock, our observation of this phenomenon produced a lively discussion at the dive shack. Now the radar tracking map from the WeatherChannel© seemed strikingly relevant! We observed the story as eyewitnesses.

Nature’s suggestion for the next step in our scientific road to discovery was that “something was up!” Divers are used to the dearth of sound from the environment under water; however the absence of life was insurmountably strange. The supposition that we missed an important warning made me feel like a banana that was past ripeness and starting to stink. Threatening infrasonic warnings issued to the fish and even to the divers were heeded or not, but it did not change the facts: one of the largest hurricanes in history was headed for our island paradise on a collision course with death.

Predictions of what came next flew around the island that evening as we packed to leave the next day. We helped the bartenders pack their hut and in the morning nailed plywood to the windows of the hotel; meanwhile the tracking map showed Hurricane Mitch poised to strike Belize in a couple of days. The turning point in the storm was the next day October 26, 1998, when it reached its strongest peak in pressure, speed, and force; as we waited helplessly at the small airport, along with everyone else on the island trying to leave Ambergris Caye. This category of hurricane is doubtless deadly and by Monday we were terrified.

The hypothesis that the undersea world was properly informed of the danger of Hurricane Mitch by LFN played out before our eyes that ominous day in 1998. We observed something in nature totally unusual, and concluded that there was an important reason the fish were gone. The prediction of impending disaster became critically serious once we studied the weather map and listened to the discussion about Hurricane Mitch later that day.

Hurricane Mitch (Satellite view 1998)

Fortunately we escaped the hurricane’s wrath, not having to test our scientific hypothesis; it made a precipitous turn south, narrowly avoiding the chain of islands. But for as long as I am a diver, I will never forget the day the fish were completely absent when they heard Mitch was coming. What happened to Honduras is testament to the power of this storm: unofficial reports totaled the rainfall in Honduras during this storm at 75 inches, and it was the deadliest Atlantic hurricane since 1780 (218 years).

©Mark H. Pillsbury