The Hourglass of Nature

I am sprawled out at the shoreline of this Great Lake looking through blue sky as best I can, making it seem endless, until slow atoms floating across my eyeballs bring me back to focus on what lies beneath my ability to see forever. All I can hear is the lapping of waves and the occasional seagull against the energy of this massive containment of water. I can’t hear everything that is available to my sight at this precarious shoreline. As water slips back into the lake under the next wave it moves sand with it that makes the most incredible sound, like a billion granules each touched by the next over and over again until it is so uniformly timed it becomes awash with perfection we are unable to describe. It is the same sound we would hear if we were to capture water as it freezes, but it is far from frozen. It is the sound you don’t hear as your body gets the chills because it is liberating rather than constricting. It is a sound that lasts forever but is forever overpowered by the elements that push it into existence. The bigger the wave, the more turbulence, the less sand you can hear. The best way to hear the hourglass of nature is to float upon the water, backside, so the waves become more quiet and the sand shatters through the water into your ears. In that moment you become, at most, more alive and in the least, refreshed. It works for me every time.