Day Ten: How Precious This Spot Is to Me

With a few last gulps of cayenne-pepper-infused lemonade, my time with the Master Cleanse comes to an end.

When I was in Alaska, I felt small.  I felt really, really small.  There is one moment in particular that remains vivid to this day.  I was standing next to a window that stretched from the floor to the ceiling.  The glass was spotless.  I was high up on a ship.  In fact it might have been the second highest level.  I was in a bathrobe, just having experienced my first Shiatsu massage.  My body felt wonderful…electric, supple, relaxed.  I walked up to the window, and looked down.  Stories below me, water rushed by the side of the boat.  Waves rippled out in an every growing arc from the place where water and metal met.  The boat, despite its massive size, seemed to glide over the glass-like surface of the ocean.  There was hardly a wave.  We were passing through the heart of Glacier Bay National Park.

The water was an intense, deep blue.  It was almost black.  It lacked that greenish quality that the open ocean elsewhere seems to have.  Here, everything was blue.  We hadn’t ventured far enough into the park to see glaciers yet.  Instead, the coast was rocky and snow-capped.  We were close to shore.  In fact, we were far closer than I ever would have expected.  It surprised me.  There was no shoreline of which to speak.  Instead, water lapped at sheer rock cliffs.  The face of the cliffs extended upward a dozen feet or so.  Snow and ice covered much of the tops.  Then I realized that our proximity to the coast was an illusion.  The cliffs were far.  They weren’t just a dozen feet tall.  They must have been dozens of feet tall.  Dozens.  A hundred feet.  More.  It was a smaller boat that had come into view and exposed the illusion of proximity.  I understood then that I was in a place that was on a totally different scale than anywhere else I had ever been in my life.  For the first time in my life, I can say that I truly understood how small we all are on the face of this vast, magnificent Earth.  

I stood there for a good ten minutes or more.  I just stared.  I watched water slide by underneath and the cliffs rise and fall, undulating as we ventured deeper inland.  Nobody knocked on the door.  There was no music playing.  Faintly, I could hear the world outside.  I put my hand up to the window, and cold emanated from the glass.  I stood in almost complete silence.  I trembled, not from cold but from awe.  Awe and reverence.  I stood there for a very long time.

My body is small.  My body is seemingly meaningless.  But it is mine.  It is the only one I have.  I do not think there are any others just like it on this Earth.  It is a vehicle for my soul, and my soul is joyful, indeed, to be its passenger.  I will continue to move about this Earth, relishing every moment I am granted.  

A ten-day detox may seem trivial, but it has reminded me of my place in this Universe…and just how precious this spot is to me.