Walking Meditation or Obsession

Steel Gray Jewel

Story of a modern day hunter-gatherer

Sharks have been swimming in the sea for more than 400 million years.

We humans, newcomers on the scene, have a fascination bordering on compulsion when given the opportunity to find their fossilized teeth.

Head down, walking in a slow, trancelike fashion, hunter after hunter makes her way along the shoreline.

Some use the cumbersome “Florida snow shovel”, that heavy metal basket on a pole, to scoop up large gobs of sand which they will paw through like a racoon looking for grubs. Others walk the beach oblivious to the construction of emerging castles, bumping into anyone in their way. They are on a mission, obsessed with finding the next treasure. One man shows me his best find of four years. It is a perfectly shaped, two-inch-long steel grey jewel.

As I walk, head down, searching, I train my eyes to hone in on the characteristic color and shape, and the way the light reflects on the tooth’s surface. I learn the hard, smooth feel of the enamel between my fingers, and soon it becomes a walking meditation with the sound of the surf as my mantra. My mind wanders back to happier days when my children searched for these teeth. Intent on the search, and with precious memories taking me to another time and place, I often miss the abundance of beauty in the present moment. I need just look up to catch a dolphin jumping, a pelican diving for breakfast, a snowy plover running just out of reach of the surf.

My collection grows quickly. I begin to look for smaller and smaller teeth and find some no bigger than the point of a pencil. They are shiny and black as coal, which incidentally has been around for a very long time, but not as long as the sharks.

I believe that there is a plan at work here. I think of ancient Hunter-Gatherer societies and how they would have constantly scanned their landscape for food. Survival depended on being observant. I think of the sharks, cruising the face of the deep, eyes perpetually open in search of the next meal. I feel a connection to them, although it seems the tables have been turned, as I now search for the very tools they used for the kill. I think about our modern, easy lives, our food pre-packaged and nicely disguised, shielding us from knowing about blood and sinew and bone that once lived and breathed, swam or flew, or trotted through fields.

I think of marginalized people with mental illness and wonder if what we call “obsessive compulsive disorder” might be a vestigial behavior from another time — a time when conduct we now view as aberrant may have been simply and perfectly adaptive.

We hunt, therefore we survive.

And for all my musings, I reach a conclusion that the mystery could be part of the plan. It’s not up to me to figure it out. Sure, laugh, you rude gulls. What do you know about it? You and your flock mentality. You wouldn’t recognize a mystery if it was offered up to you like a salty French fry.

And so, I will sing unto the Lord a new song; for She has done marvelous things.

Let the sea roar. Let the floods clap their hands. Let the hills be joyful together. And may we tread lightly around the castles.