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What you see when you pay attention, Joy Ride Vol 19

I drive over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge pretty regularly. Considered to be one of the seven engineering wonders of the modern age, the bridge extends over 17 miles of the Chesapeake Bay and connects the landmass of Virginia with the peninsula known as the Eastern Shore. Across the 17 miles there are two tunnels and a brief touchdown on a barrier island that serves as a national wildlife refuge. 

That’s the description you get if you google “Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.” What’s way cooler, though, is what you learn if you drive over it a bunch of times. 

At low tide, you’ll see folks tending to oyster cages and you realize how shallow most of the water is around the seaside barrier islands. About 20% of the time there is a bald eagle perched on the light pole at the north end of Fisherman Island National Wildlife Refuge. Very rarely, there’s a pair of bald eagles. One time, I saw a pod of dolphins playing in the shore break at Wise Point. It was spectacular to be descending from the bridge as the dolphins darted and dove and rode the waves. 

I’ve done the drive dozens and dozens and dozens of times and I’ve only ever seen the dolphins once.

On Tuesday we talked about what happens when we allow the creative process to be what it is – unwieldy and full of digressions and left turns. When we don’t get frustrated by its nonlinear nature, creating can be felt, followed, and fun.

If you want to see the dolphins, you’ll probably need to make the drive a bunch of times. And, I'd argue that there’s something even cooler than seeing dolphins: paying attention. We start off driving to see the dolphins, but the gift is learning to keep our eyes peeled. We look closely and we begin to learn the terrain. We see all sorts of neat things we hadn’t noticed before – not just the fabulous splashy dolphins, but the shape of the wrack line after a summer storm and the squiggly lines in the sand visible beneath the cold winter water and the green being summoned into the shrubs at the edge of the sand in the spring.

We can see rhythm if we look close enough. We can follow what’s unfolding if we keep coming back. The dolphins are cool but learning to be a keen observer – that’s where all the fun is.

This quote is from Mary Oliver on On Being and the whole episode is worth a listen.

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