Tides…are a big deal.
We talk a lot about water around here. Did you know that Maine has 3500 miles of tidal coastline? We have over 6000 lakes and ponds. We take our mud boots very seriously and every third conversation is about water. We talk about managing run-off after a big storm, snow melts & overflowing rivers, how saturated the raised beds in the garden are and of course, where is the tide right now? Where will it be in an hour when we want to go for a walk?
Our Maine tides are magnificent…they rise and fall 8′-12′ (compare that to Florida’s 2′ tide). The distance the water travels in the intertidal zone still fascinates me when I contemplate that at low tide, I’m walking on the sea floor; AND just 6 hours later, the ocean will be 12′ over my head if I stood still. Tides are gravity made visible.
Katherine May talks about the tides in Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age: “Only occasionally do I remember that I am really watching the pull of the moon. The sun influences the tides, but only weakly, the moon’s proximity to the earth, and its sheer scale, means that tides are gravity made visible. As the earth rotates, the sea reaches towards the moon, causing a high tide at the closest point. A simultaneous high tide rises at the opposite point on the globe, too, the farthest point from the moon. This one is a little more counterintuitive: here, the moon does not exert enough gravity to pull the water inwards, and so the tide bulges in the other direction, freed from all constraints.”
May continues, “High tides happen when the moon is close, and when she is far away, and low tides occur in the spaces between. The sun is just a helper, amplifying the moon, but it does have a very real influence on our perception of the tides. A day as we know it is twenty-four hours long, but the moon orbits the earth in twenty-four hours and fifty minutes. This means that from where we’re standing, the tides shift by roughly an hour each day, moving restlessly through the mornings and afternoons, as if they are trying to escape us.”
Want to dive even deeper? Do you know about the “rule of twelfths”? This phenomenon explains why so many people end up with wet shoes and towels as they try and approximate the incoming tide while they’re playing in the water. Consider this: choose a day to relax at the beach here in the campground. Savor the commitment to watch the water for a full twelve hours…all the while picking up stones, splashing in the waves, hunting for seaglass, listening to the gulls and timing the incoming and outgoing tides…this choice makes you a participant in the growing slow travel movement.
All this about tides and we haven’t even turned the conversation towards tidepools and the reversing falls! I need to head outside and get the new asparagus plants into the ground but stay tuned for another watery installment or two in the weeks to come…we’ll be welcoming guests in just 16 days for our project week!
Love to you all, Astrig
