Gulf Coast of Florida visit

Early yesterday morning, I took a trip down to St. Marks Lighthouse just south of Tallahassee Florida, facing the Gulf of Mexico. Checking an online map of the oil spill before departing had shown that tar balls had been sighted in Destin FL....I'm not sure if they closed the beaches to Panama City or not, but that was as far east along the Florida coast as the oil had affected so far.

I had felt a nice unconscious distance to the spill in some way, because to attempt to imagine it personally does not make sense. It isn't poisoning my body - I can't smell it - at this point, it's still fairly far away from my physical life.

So this short journey was to hopefully bridge some realities together...

St. Marks Lighthouse is an old historic building - not sure exactly anything. It sits on the coastline surrounded by inlets and alligator occupied marshland.
What a gorgeous magical place this is.

There were a couple long oil buoys in sight....wait, is it illegal to look at them?

I stood on a rock in the shallow water of incoming sea, a minature ecosystem before me.......grass and other plants standing in the water, schools of finger-long little fish darting, a medium size crab hunting for food. Watching that crab entranced me. Thinking about how different animals and insects have different ways of moving, related to their physical structure....this crab seemed to dance to the right and left a bit, before making forward motion.....pulling himself up by his claws, holding on grass blades only to find nothing of interest...back down....
And snails! EVERYWHERE.

I took a walk down a trail past some gator marsh and more ocean.....I found some beautiful dark violet berries and some friendly birds (in the photo)....

A small beach area lay at a curve in the trail....I stopped here to take pictures and listen to the ocean.

All I can or want to say in words, is...maybe the ocean communicated with me, maybe it told me of itself and its life. It's mysterious to us all, to me today was mystery. The ocean and the coast, and all its life, seemed to tell me that prayer is powerful. To witness a small bit of its untouched coastline, and to imagine what could alter its existence in terrible ways, showed me a deep sadness. Not a personal sadness that you cry for; something much more profound.....of ignorance and cruelty, a type of innocence and strength and peace that could be poisoned with an evil neglect.

But today, everything was alive.