Sneaker Waves

After being tumbled by a big wave, we cough, gag. Shudder back into ourselves and make for higher ground.

On the Oregon Coast, “Never turn your back on the ocean” is as common a saying as “Don’t go swimming after a meal” was on the Gulf Coast of my childhood. Oregon is where I learned about sneaker waves—those occasional waves out of all proportion to the rest that can leave you tumbled and thrashed. The sand and gravel they fill your clothes with can feel like concrete, survivors say. If they don’t pull you down and out to sea, sneaker waves can knock you out with an incoming log, or pin you under one.

Not all coastlines are vulnerable to sneaker waves. Features of the Northwest Coast that make them more common include a narrow continental shelf and winter storms far offshore. I learned this when I began researching sneaker waves while looking forward to a weekend at the coast. Then Mama Ephemera recognized the potential in the topic and next thing you know, researchers at Oregon State University, National Weather Service, and some others published a paper about exactly this! Mama Ephemera has her finger on the pulse, y’all.

The paper, Observations of extreme wave runup events on the US Pacific Northwest coast, appeared Jan. 31 in the journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences. It is not even behind a paywall so you can read it for yourself and see the cool graphics. Or check out the OSU press release for an easier-to-read summary.

I guess my continental shelf is narrow, and there must be a lot of winter storms off my shore, because I keep getting knocked over by sneaker-wave-people. I was standing too close to their shore. Or got all involved in chasing sand crabs or hunting sand dollars. Next thing you know, I’m in a heap, soaking wet, desperate to figure out which way is up.

Near Yachats, Oregon. © Kelly Lenox. All rights reserved.

It’s not that I expect waves to detour around me, but—call me naïve—I also don’t expect one to be so completely life-wrecking. Remember dungarees? (Jeans, from way back, before fashion got busy with sequins, spandex, strategic rips and all). That old-school denim holds as much sand as it does salt water. Dries so stiff. Some days I need that kind of stiffness.

When someone leaves me hurting, it doesn’t matter—at first—whether they meant to. If you are wondering what this is all about, it’s about a hundred things, give or take.

Among them are an especial handful of times, not one of which felt survivable when the wind was first knocked out of me. After being tumbled by a big wave, we cough, gag. Shudder back into ourselves and make for higher ground. Salt water, so healing, can leave the throat, the eyes raw. Or wait, was that from the good cry? Good, because no longer bottled up, ready to blast the lid off.

Inhale. Exhale. And there is evening. And there is morning. Another day.

And another. Does time truly heal? Maybe it’s not time at all, but the action of breath removing one grain of sadness, of grief, on each exhale. Infinitesimally, the burden lessens. Like a video of slow-growing coral played backwards.

Until one day, you notice yourself standing a little bit taller. Strength, for so long just a memory, becomes something you can feel. A single muscle fiber is slightly stronger. Then another one, until there are enough to lift a foot—bare or shod, wet or dry—and extend it forward. A step.

Looking back across a life, such moments look alike on some level, like the sea on a series of afternoons.

To pause and recall these experiences is to be reminded that I am in control of almost nothing. Just myself and my response to what happens (and sometimes even that’s a stretch).

Like this meme I pinned to my cubicle wall at an especially difficult job in an especially difficult period of my life.

The monk is the clue that paradox lurks close by. And sure enough: recognizing that nothing is under my control (not the same as being powerless), instead of driving me deeper into darkness, can sometimes lift a layer from the curtain of sadness and allow a little more light to shine through.

Like a reminder of the bright day beyond.

Like a promise.