For Whom the Bells Toll

The San Juan summer sun had seemed intense this year, so Ted, Kenidee, and I relished the moist air and cooler temperatures of the Pacific as we strolled across the beige sand toward the jetty.
We were at the Humbolt Bay along the Redwood Coast in California. Before we could climb onto the jetty, however, my brother texted me that my niece, who had been struggling with brain cancer, was in critical condition and might not make it. I felt the grief in my throat and eyes as we scrambled up the embankment.
Very few people walked on the jetty, and those who did crossed it to access the ocean-side beach with their fishing poles in hand.
Maybe because Kenidee, our mini schnauzer, was glad to be out of the 4 Runner, maybe because she loved the cooler temperature, maybe because she was glad to be alive on her third birthday, she started zooming up and down the pier as fast as her little legs could carry her.
The jetty’s surface was pocked, so occasionally she stumbled, but picked herself up immediately to continue her wild run. I laughed, but grief still clogged my throat as I texted back and forth with my brother.
A fishing vessel chugged across the bay with brown pelicans diving all around it, often surfacing with fish in their expandable pouches.
A buoy periodically clanged when the waves hit it, and I couldn’t help but think of the meditation, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” by John Donne. “No man is an island, / Entire of itself,” the poet wrote in 1624 after a bout with near-fatal spotted fever. “Each is a piece of the continent, / A part of the main.”
As we continued our walk, picking our way carefully because the asphalt surface of the pier had become broken and full of large cracks and holes, I thought about my beautiful niece and how many lives she’d touched during her journey toward wholeness.
Nurses, doctors, family, friends, and entire communities in Utah and Kansas had been touched by her spiritual courage.
While Kenidee continued to run circles around us, Ted and I read signs warning pedestrians about heavy seas, including tsunamis.
I remembered watching the news when the tsunami hit Japan and crumpled buildings like tin foil, but that danger seemed unlikely on this beautiful, calm morning.
We stopped to take pictures of fishing vessels, seagulls, starfish, and millions of periwinkle snails. When we neared the end of the pier, a jumble of concrete breakers tilted in every direction.
I thought they might be evidence of the incredible power of the ocean and found out later the breakers, shaped like gigantic toy jacks and weighing over eight tons each, were called dolosse.
The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers had constructed them to dissipate wild waves. At the very tip of the jetty, a family of osprey nested in a tall platform fitted with lights and solar panels, unafraid of potential threats coming from the vast, living ocean.
When we didn’t hear any more news about Liz, we decided to continue our exploration of the coastline and later that morning hiked on the Tsurai Trail, a headland, “known as Tsurewa to the Yurok village of Tsurai.”
According to an informational sign, a young Tsurai man once told his sister he would like a hill where they were standing, so he went down to the beach, gathered some sand, rounded it into a mound, and sat on it, saying, “I wish you would be higher.”
The sand responded by growing higher. The young man, not quite satisfied, said, “I wish you would be a little higher.”
Again, the sand grew until it became the magnificent, sacred hill.Satisfied, the young man said, “That is all.”
The short loop meanders around the hill, through overhanging trees, and along brilliant flowers, blackberries, and wild grapes.
On the west side of the hill, it overlooked the ocean where dozens of rocky promontories provided nesting areas for cormorants and other seabirds and shelter for seals and sealions.
At the time, we could hear the crashing of waves, but not the tolling of buoys. However, the truth that John Donne penned those many years ago again struck me again.
After he contracted spotted fever, he lay alone, near death, and heard the funeral bells of a nearby church. He wondered if they were ringing for him.
Then came the leap in understanding and his profound realization: “Each man’s death diminishes me, / For I am involved in mankind. / Therefore, send not to know/ For whom the bell tolls, / It tolls for thee.”
As we hiked, I considered the interconnectedness of all humanity: the Yurok people who inhabited this holy landscape for thousands of years, the moms and dads on the beach now with their children and dogs, the little girl who stopped to talk with us about taking the wrong trail, and Carolus III who died on June 9, 1775, a huge memorial cross marking his burial place.
I kept expecting a text or call from my brother. It never came. In fact, as I write this, Liz is still alive and continues to improve against all odds.
However, the understanding that came to me during our walks near the Pacific remains: “We are like islands in the sea,” William James writes, “separate on the surface but connected on the deep.”