The first thing I noticed about the Pacific Ocean near Timaru was the variety in color. The color changes from moment to moment. It goes in a matter of hours from sterling silver, that soft silver grey that blends into the stormy sky to brilliant turquoise that contrasts dynamically with the brilliant coral sunset. It diffuses from sea foam green to turquoise to purple cobalt blue as the sun rides the shallow and the troughs, the rocks and deep trenches, fading to lavender blue as it nears the shore. It is baby blue then lavender then foam swept aqua. There seems no end to the colors it presents in a day. It is silver grey, steel grey, taupe, gunmetal, pale aqua, teal, cobalt, navy, deep purple, lavender and on and on.
It is beautifully calm on a warm day with waves lazily
lapping the sandy beach. The beach
echoes the ripples as the water pulls itself from the sand to the sea leaving
zig-zag patterns of blingy, glittering gold, copper and silver. It forms staggered waving patterns as it
retreats. Down the coast a way, as the
breeze stiffens, it is roiling and boiling, an angry sea pulling rocks from the
shingle beach then tossing them back like a boy throwing pebbles at a wall or
better yet, a thousand boys throwing a million pebbles. The sound is the same I surmise. It devours and lays waste. It pushes and pulls and rearranges everything
in its path, a giant tumbler always polishing.
As the waves crash to the shore and pull themselves back, it
creates more waves at the apex of each hit.
It slams into hidden rocky reefs and sends waves crashing helter-skelter
at right angles to create even more waves.
There are waves surging everywhere and it is easy to see myself
swallowed up by one rogue monster.
When it is really angry, it catapults logs in the air. It is the color of creamy hot chocolate with
cinnamon sticks floating in its frothy foam.
The rocks sound like a giant rain stick forever being upended by a never
tiring child. It billows and sprays and
hisses at the gulls trying to make headway against the gale. The birds look suspended in flight by the
wind. The water rolls into great curls,
looking like the hair of a mermaid falling onto the sand. It sweeps the beach clean and the friction
polishes everything in its path, stones, wood, shell and bone become smooth in
its wake.
On a sunny day further south, it becomes an entirely
different scene as it creates gathers and tiers of a maiden’s ball gown, pale
aqua blue. She pulls her skirt coyly up
to reveal layer after layer of ruffly, silken, spun lace frills spilling onto
the golden sand. It moves as she twirls
and all the layers change from moment to moment. She is dancing at sea and the frills keep time to the music. The sun slowly sets, the color of her dress
deepens and the silken slips become strangely iridescent in the light of the moon. The light reflects off the moving layers creating
ruffles and swirls. The sea calms, the
music quiets. The ball is over and
tomorrow all the moods of “the ever changing sea” will have changed. The maid slips from her dress. It falls to the floor. It is now time to rest.
