John G. Smith
"Rogue Wave"

It was like looking down through time.  The oval tide-pool, filled nearly to the brim with water so still, so transparent that you hardly knew it was there, plunged deep down into the sandstone, an eon of excavation.  The concentric circles around its side marked off millennia of scouring, down to the large granite rock at the bottom, glowing pink with exotic algae, a massive truculent guardian of the pool’s deepest secrets. Deeper than it was wide, the tide-pool was festooned with colour -  purple sea-urchins, glistening green eel-grass, and spiky lime-green anemones. Its water was stock still, waiting.

Crouched on one knee, my body blocking the sun so that it didn’t glare off the surface, I stared down into this separate world of primitive plant and animal life, surviving until the next revival, when the incoming tide would bring its deluge of nutrient-rich sea-water, the sequence of life for this microcosm. I was transfixed by the silently waiting patience of this little world. Even more I was absorbed by the process by which it had been created, the eons of tides scooping and scouring down through the sandstone. It was a crack in time.

And then I saw a shadow next to mine, reflected in the translucent water, and felt Terry’s hand on my shoulder.  I looked up at his solemn face as he peered down.

“Isn’t the structure of these things astonishing,” I said.

“You mean the sunstar,” he pointed.

I looked across to the other side and saw, for the first time, the lobster-coloured sunstar with its tapered rays about half way down, half hidden by eel-grass.

“No, actually – I mean the tide-pool itself – all of them – the way the sandstone has been eaten away to create all these separate little worlds – they don’t even know about each other.” 

I stood up and looked across the expanse of the sandstone ridge, pocked by hundreds of tide-pools ranging from the size of a dinner plate to some which were twenty or thirty feet wide, populated by fish and crabs as well as all the plant life.

Terry, still looking down, quickly said, “Look at the fish.” 

And there, where he pointed, just below the surface, was a school of hundreds of minute fish, parading across the pond and turning in tight formation to disappear beneath the eel-grass.

“All that life,” he said.

                                                   ***

Megan and I had picked up Terry and Bonnie at dawn that morning and we set off to get to Botanical Beach in time to catch the especially low tide just before this month’s full moon. The two-hour trip was an annual event for the four of us, though neither I nor Megan had mentioned it to them this year, thinking that maybe they wouldn’t want to go. But Terry had said at the reception after their son’s funeral that he and Bonnie were looking forward to it, and that of course we should go. So we made the arrangements right then for Friday the next week – “It will be less crowded on a weekday,” we agreed.

The drive had started quietly, Terry sitting beside me as I drove, sipping coffee for the first few miles, then dozing a bit. Bonnie and Megan were quiet too, until about half an hour before we got there, when a brief discussion about where to turn woke everyone up a bit. I glanced at Terry; his eyes, staring ahead, looked haunted, his face grey in the filtering morning sun. Perhaps he should have driven, to give him something to do.

Megan, who has a way of doing these things, said; “I thought the Reverend Morley was such a good choice.”

“Yes,” said Bonnie almost eagerly, “he had come to know Brent quite well over the last three or four months and so was able to –you know – make it all –”

“Relevant,” I suggested.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And I thought your sister spoke beautifully about Brent.”

“Yes, it wasn’t easy for her – Brent was her favourite nephew.”

“And all those young people,” said Megan, "for many of them a first in several ways – their first funeral and maybe their first time in a church – I think it was important for them – they needed to be there.” Her voice trailed away as she seemed to hear the triteness.

Terry, speaking for the first time, said, “Brent had a lot of good friends.”

We were all silent for the last few minutes of the drive, but it was a more comfortable silence.

Brent had finally died less than two weeks ago. The inoperable brain tumour had been the only thing wrong in his eighteen-year-old body, which had taken a long time to give up.

                                                     ***

We arrived at the nearly empty beach parking lot when the low tide was just on the turn, according to the tide table on the notice board. This meant we had several hours before the incoming tide would sweep over the ledge. We went down the trail, clambered over rocks and down the cliff to our favourite place, the huge sandstone shelf which stretches wide and flat out towards the sea, acres of a natural wonderland, pitted with hundreds of tide-pools filled with clear still water and populated by a rich assortment of plant and animal life. We could see a couple way out by the ocean, and a family by the cliff, but otherwise we were alone, each occupying our separate worlds.

Rearing up from the middle of the flat expanse is a huge rock pinnacle which looks as if it has been left there by accident, ledged and cracked and encrusted with barnacles.

We spent a couple of hours wandering among the tide-pools, marvelling at their mysteries, and taking pictures. Megan and Bonnie knew more of the names of the plants and sea-life, and we called them show-offs. We all chose our favourites – Terry and I voted for the deep oval tide-pool that I had found and which so intrigued him. After a while I wandered away, but Terry, still as a statue, was there for a long time.

                                                 ***

The tide was on its way in, the waves crashing against the outer bulwarks of rocks when we went up the trail for lunch, sitting at a table watched by crows. Megan and Bonnie hadn’t checked with each other to see what each would bring, and we laughed at the strange assortment of food.

“Far too many cookies,” said Terry, taking his third. 

Then he told us how Brent had talked about God a couple of months back, and how he had said he always thought God had wanted him to be a good athlete until he got sick, and how he realized then that God wanted him to do something else with his life, and how he was trying to work out what it was God wanted him to do. Terry told this to us very calmly, with a little smile. Bonnie got up from the table and walked over to the crows, which hopped sideways away, eyeing her. She stood with her back to us for a while, and then came back.

 “Where are those cookies?” she said.

                                              ***

After lunch, we went back down the trail. It seemed that the incoming tide still had a way to go before it reached the tide-pools, so we picked our way across great jumbles of jagged outcrops and boulders which lay to the south of the sandstone shelf. It was slow going, and I was looking down for each step. Terry was more confident, hopping from boulder to boulder, more relaxed. The women were behind us and farther inland, near the cliffs, taking it slowly.

Something made me look up and I saw Terry standing absolutely still, gazing along the beach, his hand out, motioning me to be quiet.

“What is it?”

“A bear.” 

I couldn’t see it. “Where?”

“Over there, by the trees.”

I looked farther along and saw it about a hundred yards away, a brown-grey creature, standing facing partly away from us, its head down. Terry had his binoculars to his eyes. 

“It’s eating something – maybe a fish.” 

The bear was up the beach from the water. Between it and us was a small inlet where the incoming sea had almost reached to the cliffs. The bear lifted its head and looked in our direction – maybe he had caught our scent – and began to amble down to the inlet.

“It doesn’t look very big,” I said quietly.

“No, I think it’s maybe a year or two old only.”

 Terry handed me the binoculars and I looked – couldn’t find it – then found it down by the water, standing sniffing the air.

“What do we do if it starts coming this way?”

“He won’t – he’s fishing.” 

Terry sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, but I was nervous. I handed the binoculars back to him and, as if my movement had released something the bear turned and began moving away up the rocky shore, towards the trees. It broke into an awkward, loping run, but I realized it was moving very fast over the jagged rocks – much faster than we could.

The bear disappeared into the trees and we went to join Megan and Bonnie, who had also seen it. Laughing at our trepidation we made our way back to the sandstone shelf. By now, the sea was surging against the rocks just beyond it, and spray from breaking waves was splattering its outer reaches. Terry wandered over to the beautiful oval pool we had chosen, and I followed, thinking about the rising tide. Terry crouched down and gazed into the clear water.

“Look at them all, frozen in anticipation.”

He seemed fascinated by the effect sea water would have on this little world. A wave crashed on the rocks behind us and a film of sea water idled across the flat surface, propelled, it seemed, by invisible magnetism to stretch itself to find the tide-pool. It just reached the lip of the pool and almost imperceptibly a ripple coasted across its surface.

“A rogue wave,” I heard him whisper. 

We stared down to see if anything had happened. All was still in the depths.

“We’d better start moving,” I said, and straightened up, looking for Megan. 

She and Bonnie had already moved off the shelf, and were standing on higher rocks. I couldn’t tell if they were watching us or the sea. I walked towards them, skirting the pools and passing the big, jutting rock that stood, sentinel-like, embedded in the sandstone plain. I looked back to see Terry standing with his back to the ocean, almost nonchalantly, hands in his pockets, his head bent over the pool, as rills of sea water with delicate foam fringes crept by him and into the pools.

Just as I reached the rocks at the base of the cliff and began to clamber up I heard Bonnie.

“Terry,” she screamed.

 I looked up and saw her pointing. Twisting, I looked back. A wall of water was hurtling towards the outer rocks, a yawning cavern of menacing death, dark green. I remembered afterwards how Bonnie’s scream had hung in the suddenly silent air.

Then everything happened at once. Terry galloping, ungainly, coat flapping, arms flailing, wildly jumping the pools, and the fearsome thundering crash of the huge wave on the rocks throwing great bursts of spray and foam high up into the sunlight, and a torrent of swirling, rushing sea water racing, seething across the ledge with astonishing speed, pouring into pools, washing over them, splashing against their rims, voracious, engulfing. 

Terry reached the great jutting rock and almost pranced to the top, nimble as the bear, as the raging water reached its base and hissed and splashed high, soaking him as he turned triumphant to watch the rogue wave capture the ledge in a white frenzy of foam, sparkling and glittering.

There he was, glorious in the sun, his arms raised, fists clenched, and as he punched the air we could hear him yelling  “Hoh!” “Hoh!” “Hoh!” and he turned towards us, tears streaming down his face.