The Hour the Tide Forgets You

A minus tide is a brief amnesty. The Pacific steps back and leaves its working parts in the open: anemones like wet jade, the slow geometry of a sea star, mussels locked in their own weather. You have maybe two hours. The water will come back whether you have finished looking or not.

Tidepooling is not collecting. It is attending. Turn a rock only if you will turn it back. Do not take the star home in a bucket — it is not a souvenir, and it will not survive your kindness. The animals that live here live in a world that floods and drains twice a day. Your job is to be the least interesting thing that happened to them.

The best hours are the falling ones, on a morning when the swell is small and the wind has not yet stood up. Bring shoes you can ruin. Bring nothing else if you can help it. The tide log in this magazine exists so that the hour does not slip past you while you are still inland, telling yourself you will go tomorrow.

Tomorrow the tide will be different. That is the whole teaching.