Author Archives:

This is the final chapter of the salt marsh fable, Sweetwater, written for your astonishment and delight.

 You can access previous chapters in the menu to the right on this blog, Thrive.

That evening a high pressure moved in from the north and the sky cleared. The earth turned toward the east. The sun skipped to the west, saw the sea and sighed lovingly.

“Come to me,” said the sun.

“Catch me,” said the sea.

And catch the sea the sun did. Picking up the soft, blue sheet, the sun pulled the sea over its head. Then, the golden light peeked back out of the bed covers and gave the sea a green wink.

“So there, and there and there,” said the sun,  and kissed the sea, the bay, the marsh and the uplands goodnight.

But the sun was still awake, and childishly playful,  it cast a warm yellow glow into the fading day. It lit a thin crescent moon that had been hiding all day close to its side, but now was left dawdling by itself over the sea.

The sun cast itself with brilliant intensity on the back side of the moon. The thin, knife-like edge of the  brightened moon floated down to the sea, as the sky darkened and darkened and darkened yet again.

Though it could not be seen from the marsh, the sun  tossed a full-portion of itself upon the backside of the earth and this brilliance bounced off of the blue planet and landed on the face of the moon, extending its light beyond the crescent. On the full orb of the moon, a soft, yellow glow lit the lunar mountains, the sea-like plains and all the circular craters.

The moon, now deeply enmeshed with the sun in its diurnal dance, lingered briefly in the evening sky, showing off the reflected glory. But the time had come for the  thin bowl of light to bid goodby to the earth

“Good bye,” said the moon, and  flew under the watery bed covers of the sea to give way to the glittering hosts of the night.

The sky, in defiance of the city, turned dark and beautiful, blue-black at the zenith, diamonds in its hair. Leo rose up out of the west,  attending Jupiter, escorting Virgo, prominading through the heavens. The night passed in starry splendor over the sea, the marsh and the little butterflies sleeping in a tattered corner in the uplands.

As morning approached, Leo set where the sun had fallen into the sea the night before, and the northern cross , with arms spread, rose up from where the sun would rise.

Then morning came again, and the sun ascended, a great roaring fire in the east.

The desert woke, Octotillo flaming, the moutains too, oaks resplendant.

The oxygen in the air shyly greeted the hydrogen and they kissed.

The nitrogen came alive in the heat and ran circles above the ground

The volcanic ash danced with star-dust and took up a waltz with the flotsam and jetsam of life, riding on the wind.

“Dance with me,” each one called out and they danced, bits and pieces of the earth  spinning across the earth.

Down in the depths of the ground, the aquafir responded to the spinning earth and shook hands with the shells and the sandstone there, dreaming of huge columns and grand entablatures.

Out on the mesas, the great flat flat floors to the north, the fairy shrimp darted through the vernal pools that only weeks before had been dry dust. Looking up at the bright sun shinning down into their thin, watery worlds, the shrimp floated on their backs and  called out gently, “Its enough for us today. It is so much more than enough of enough for us. We don’t  need or ask for anything more than this!” And then mesa mint, growing along side of the pools, put on her fragrance and waltz across the measa perfuming the air.

Up on the tops of the bluffs to the northwest, above the sculpted wind caves of Torrey Pines, reposing on the soft green skin of the earth, the lacy yellow filaree, the lovely purple sand verbena and the golden sunflowers sunbathed.  The gorgeous orange California poppies lifted their faces to the deep blue sky.

“We love you!” the poppies called out to the sky. “It’s enough! We swear it!”

The wind kissed the flowers. They ducked awasy; they popped forward again, they paused, the sun kissed them again; they smiled. Down in the blue-green waters of the sea, far below the poppies,  the bright orange and lumenescent blue Garibaldi washed back and forth in the lush surf grass.

“Dance,” the Garabaldi said.

“We dance,” the poppies said,  and the splotches of bright orange under the blue sky moved  with the splotches of bright orange down under the blue sea.

And to all this, and more, Professor Cabbage awoke early in the tiny patch of tattered mustard he and his students had perched in for the night,  a tiny bit of his lab that remained at the south edge of the uplands. He flew to the top, and  looked north.

“My little students,” he cried out excitedly, “Get up! Look!”

The sea, with the sun attending it,  was running into the marsh.

The water had already crossed the mud flats and begun to run into the small ditch that followed the route of the railroad tracks.

“It’s coming for us,” said the sleepers.

“It’s good,” shouted the dirt.

“It’s alive!” shouted the professor to his students, and out of the patch of mustards he flew, and all his little students flew with him, powering fast and hard toward the water  and light that was running quickly toward them.

Cabbage scouted the area ahead of them as they flew, looking for a perch, a tower, a turret, an entablature to watch from. Then he saw what he hadn’t seen the day before. Not all the plants had flown.

“There,” he shouted,  ”a little patch of salt wort.”

“There,” Peter called, catching on, “a bit of pickleweed at the edge of the pond!”

“Fennel!”shouted Coco, seeing patch of it at the edge of the tracks.

The butterflies flew to it.

As they lit, there was Professor Swallowtail, with all his students, looking out toward the marsh.

“Henri!” cried Swallow, “You live!”

“I do,” and fortunately you too,” said Professor Cabbage, with his students settling around him.

Along the beaches in Coronado, the surf was large, storm surf, make a wild, heavy dash for the shore. Huge swells, like great whales, powered into the beaches. The waves rose up and opened their great, dark mouths and then crashed their white teeth together on the land

The sea raised up; there was a great crack followed by a low, approaching roar and a finishing gurgly slosh, a soft swish and a light fizz as the bubbles arrived on the sand, softly popping.

“Devastation comes from what is within,” said Cabbage very quietly, “but newness, it is from without.” But the butterflies were too focused on what they were seeing to hear what he was saying.

They were fixated on the tide flowing, and in all the marsh now, the tide flowed in fast, running hard across the mud. The water was alive. It picked up the broken bits of dead plants and lifted them to the sky. Here and there a yellow or white daisy floated on the surface of the water. They tide came further in and it ran into the dry cracks of the earth. It shook hands with a bit of pickleweed that had not flown. It gently submerged a bit of salt grass lining the creek bank.

The water, sweet and nourishing, gave places for life where only moments before there had been none.

Small top smelt darted in among the stalks and stems of the newly created submarine forest. The little swimmers glided over the salt marsh floor where only moments before their had been dry dirt.

“Swimming now, over the dirt,” they called happily to each other.

“What is it, Professor Cabbage?” asked Professor Swallowtail.

There was along pause, then Cabbage mused, “We don’t know something different; we are something different.”

“Not doubt about that,” said Swallow, and he looked around at all his students. They were sitting together with Cabbage’s students, looking toward the sea.

“Yet the same,” said Professor Cabbage.

“It’s not the same,” said the innkeeper worm  from within his mud burrow in the tidal creek. “It’s not the same as when Cabrillo sailed into the bay.”

“Then wait,” said Cabbage. “Good things happen inside of us when we wait.”

“I’m getting old,” said the innkeeper, “waiting.”

“Maybe you’re waiting for the wrong thing,” said Cabbage.

The tidal creek rose. A sting ray, its wings undulating gently, glided through the shallow, salty water. The creek deepened. A small leopard shark weaved its way into the marsh. A Greater Egret landed on the shore of the creek, eyes eager, neck ready. The hunt was on. His long legs and yellow boots dripping, he flared up into the sky, like Orion the hunter, and then fell into the salt creek, neck curved, bill poised. He struck the water with his feathery, white head. A large fish, suddenly appeared in his bill, fresh and silvery, flopping bread of water, sun and wind.

The butterflies watched and watched. They couldn’t see enough.

“It’s small,” said Sara, gazing over the Sweetwater marsh, “like us.”

Behind them, Melodia also watched, sitting at the eastern edge of the water, perched on the limb of a fallen Tamarisk tree. This looked familar to her, and she thought of the dream she had once had of the water, coming in, and floating her palm tree away.

Professor Cabbage felt her presence and looked back and saw her, a small gray spot of mockingbird sitting there at the edge of the water. She didn’t seem far away to him, but he said nothing to the others.

He looked over at Coco, sitting close to him. She was very close, the distance between them seemed to be hardly any distance at all. He looked as her crinkled wing.

“It didn’t keep anything from happening that was supposed to happen,” he said.

“What was that, Henri?” said Professor Swallow. “Have you taken to esoteric mutterings again?”

The water came in, and it kept coming and coming. What had only moments before been mud flats and fields of devastation, simplified into huge, glassy sheets of water. This soothed Melodia. It calmed the butterflies. It soothed all the watching earth.

“We are coming,” said the water, “We are coming in now!”

“Come in,” cried the fairy shrimp out on the mesa.

“You’re wecome here,” said the pickleweed under the water. “We both invite and welcome you here.”

“Come,” said the sun to the sea and the wind.

The marsh  opened her gates to the sea and the sea came in,  patted down, shaken together and running over, and the wind ran across the waters, leaving footprints everywhere.

Cabbage looked out as far as he could see, and in that moment, he could see only a watery, airy and shinning world.