The Marsh

As a Biology major and Earth Science minor I love the marsh. A wet meadow that is so important to sea life. As a young boy the marsh was behind my house while the bay was in front of my house. I could not see either and that was good in a hurricane, but they were very close. I'd spend time in a small stream behind the house with a milk bottle and bread catching minnows. The interesting thing was that the minnows were of many varieties. I'd catch striped bass minnows with many horizontal stripes and some cod or haddock minnows with one horizontal stripe, and others that I didn't recognize at the time. Some were the classic adult minnows as well. I could see that this place was the home for the young of the ocean. Later in life I learned about the complex chemical and biological operations that happened there. More than once I was up to my waste in the mud of the back salt marsh. As a father and grandfather I watched my kids and grandkids dive head first into the mud and continue until all you see was the whites of their eyes. I never would have thought of that. Often we would get that heavy smell of low tide, familiarly pleasant in the most peculiar way.

A salt marsh looks simple but is complicated and important. Some aspects of it are unappealing even ugly and yet nature needs them desperately. People are like that I think. Sometimes things get muddy and many situations seem to smell, but often important things are birthed in the middle of it. Situations are complicated and simplicity although often sought is not necessarily the best solution. Simple answers often have a short shelf life personally and organizationally.

I think of my marriage which had it's tumultuous times in the early years. Marsha and were both complicated people with complicated issues, trying to figure out what to do in the muddy water of life. At times we could have given up the struggle, it got that difficult, but what was birthed from the midst of it became the most beautiful jewel. The minnows that entered the muck and mire grew up into something worth catching. I think today society says if things get tough you can walk away, and indeed you can. You don't have to put up with things you don't like, and indeed you don't have to. They abandon the work of the marsh for the freedom of open water, but I know I would have missed the best of life if I had done that. I sit here this morning looking at the swaying grass and smooth water of such a marsh, with mud islands sticking out here and there. Yesterday the boys fished out there and caught much bigger stripers than I did in my milk bottle, but oh the memories of my youth.