CURIOSITY – THE CURSE AND THE CURE

We went to dinner with some neighbors here in Nopolo that we met last year. Sabor is a fabulous restaurant with a great sunset view and that provides serapes for comfort against the cold.
Grant, a nice looking fellow with thick white curly hair is an animated energetic conversationalist as is his wife, Joanne. They have been coming down here for 9 years. They love it but he doesn’t think he wants to spend so much time here in the future.  He is afraid, he said, it will lose that magic for him that they (and we) experienced initially. “You know, absence makes the heart grow fonder” and “familiarity breeds contempt,” that sort of thing.
AHhh I said, you guys have the same disorder, or rather genetic predisposition that R and I have; “The novelty seeking gene!” There really is such a thing and explains why some folks seem to be pioneers, and some seem to be settlers, as one of my married friends puts it. He liked the explanation, and we continued to enjoy our meal and get to know each other, laughing at ourselves and wondering at the different people we have all been at various stages in our lives.
I wonder sometimes…
Will I become dissatisfied and depressed when I can no longer travel?
Will my husband and I look at each other one day and turn away in a shock of sheer insurmountable boredom? Needing novel can have its downside.

  
But when I walked the beach next day I considered:
I have seen these waves working away at the same shore, day after day for three months last winter, and also enjoyed watching the same Pelicans, terns, gulls, and sandpipers as well, but THIS time, this week, this month, I have questions and observations that go beyond merely observing and enjoying. Because I am studying how to create a wave, or water, with paint, I am thinking about how they crest and curl, and where the foam is and what can you see underneath, and where the light is in the morning, in the evening, and under the moon. And floating slowly around the rocky point on my paddleboard, I become aware of the push of the wind, the pull of the tide and the currents and I find out which force is dominant enough to move us in a particular direction. The slippery roundness of shallow rollers feel like going down a slide as they push us shoreward yesterday while I sat still on the board without paddling. I am intrigued.
There is also a bit of new intrigue going on with a darling small duck-like diving gull.

It is certainly a murder mystery. We find these dark birds with fluffy white breasts and white necks, laying dead on the beach, and even on the road in various stages of decay and destruction. Certainly there is a serial killer at work here on this Baja bay.

I poll the regulars who know little more than I. We have all seen the turkey vultures tearing at the bodies, so they are suspect, but they are known only for eating dead things. I cannot find an eyewitness. I put on my straw hat and dark sunglasses to tail the next possibles victim and observe the suspects without being identified as a detective. I am just another beachcomber, go about your evil business you buzzards. I spot a solitary little golden eyed diver paddling near shore, not diving. I am sure he (or she, I am yet unable to identify this bird through any of the usual channels – Audoban, Baja Ornithology, etc much less discover if they are male, female, or juveniles, because so far their size and color distributions have been identical) is staying near the latest victim, which I discover fifteen feet from the shallow water.  Ironic though it is because I hunt grouse, geese, duck, and pheasant – it makes me terribly sad. The bereft little paddler tries to walk on to the sand and he appears to be weak. He is dragging a leg and abandons his mate to go back into the water where he floats and bounces awkwardly in the small waves. Why would they be weak? What do they eat? Where do they nest? When do they breed? Do jellyfish sting them? If the water and wind is too rough why do they come here anyway? So many questions. I am kind of shocked at the persistence of my own curiosity about this little seaside drama.
But it certainly keeps me engaged with where I am now, as do my new apprehension of wave and water forms. I could stay here forever and find no end of mysteries to solve. Likely even, the invisible and rich interior mind of my spouse!
I realize how impoverished my knowledge of the natural world is. I realize how little I know about my own husband. It is quite probable I will not live long enough to learn the half of it.
Curiosity. The answer to the problem of the very curious.

I
.