Let’s imagine that you have just woken up from this dream image, and then you remember the rest of the story.
You see that when the tide begins to recede the surface of the water flattens slightly, as if the earth were holding these messages of coming loss close to her heart. Forms become distinct first as watery hummocks and then as shells and stones spangled with liquid shimmer. Periwinkles and crabs trail lines of wanderlust in the slowly drying sand. In high summer you feel like the beach becomes abandoned to torture by a sun that is no longer a guardian in this place. In the raking light of a moon bright night in deepest winter the whole surface of the beach is moving. The tiniest of creatures have their power sparkling like the largest, glittering with a longing of memory for the water that had been there before, but now is gone.
You see that when the tide begins to turn there is a swelling along the leading edge, as if the water has grown plump with waiting. In the sullen heat of a golden-edged afternoon, the returning water hisses slightly as it bubbles around pebbles and fills up the depressions that are the front doors to the hideouts of ghost shrimp and clams. What was a mottled grey strip of sand suddenly becomes a sculpin, flashing out to meet the flowing in tide. Starfish clinging in the shadowed underside of beach rocks seem to soften their grip slightly when the water meets their pitted purple skins, as if the rising tide were a signal to let go a little—in a life whose main skill is holding on. Only when the tide is several inches deep will the barnacles venture out with their feathered arms beckoning, only when the certainty of deep water arrives will the oysters open their frilly edged homes to greet what is coming to be the break in their fast.
You see that no creature on the beach expects delays; waiting for the tide to turn is not empty hoping, but inner certainty.
If this were your dream, in what part of your life right now is the tide receding, in what part is the tide turning? What part of you are the sculpin and starfish, and why is your last image one of returning salmon?
When writing the stories of the Journey Oracle divination cards, I asked dreams to help me interpret their spirit messages. I found hidden teachings in their shamanic journeys, and learned through the books of Jeremy Taylor how to understand dream language.
