Estuary Dreams
I had the good fortune to spend a weekend at the beach with a good friend near where the tidal Potomac meets the Chesapeake Bay.
On this trip, I kept being drawn out onto the water at moonrise as darkness arose. My kayaking partner and I set out to explore the back coves of an estuary off the Potomac. Kayaking at night brings on a whole alternative set of sensations and opens a whole other world as we traded our dominant vision perception for some of our often lesser-used senses. We were familiar with our route as we glided amongst the grassy islands, but still the dark was disorienting and every island started to look like the same dark mass. I could feel the water with my paddle stroke, but couldn’t see it. I only knew of the water’s tidal movement by the odd tug it put on my boat as it moved me in directions other than where I paddled. At times, I felt I was sitting still, but I drifted, pulled by currents underneath me, unseen. Even with the bright, full moon, relationships to above water figures and objects were shadowy, at best.
I thought about the close parallels between how my kayak was balanced on the surface edge of water and sky and how my conscious mind negotiated and rocked on the surface of my vast unconscious mind, which contains life forms of its own. Occasionally I’d hear a fish jump, (or was that a shadowy emergence of a part of myself?) Jung stated that, in dreams, fish are always symbols of unconscious contents.
During these night forays, I consciously kayaked the surface of my unconscious mind. Just taking this parallel inner/outer perspective generated in me a state of awe and wonder, both at the wonderful natural world I was in, and of the magical metaphor that delivered extra meaning. I allowed the dark night and fantastic moon to create a dream-like experience.
And, just like in a dream, the unexpected occurred, its anticipation wonderfully thwarted by the darkness. As we rounded the last island to paddle back to our beach, we flushed a flock of forty or so Canada Geese who had come in to set for the night. The big, powerful, birds exploded out of the waters surrounding us, with wingbeats, honking and splashing coming into our ears from all directions.
That night, I lay in bed listening to the surf breaking on the shore below our cottage. And as I drifted to sleep, I imagine I seamlessly slipped down into the dark water of my unconscious sleep world, joining the unseen, yet-to-be known fishes in the depths.
