I hiked down to the ocean today through good ole Tennessee Valley. Due to global warming, a heatwave has descended on us mid-February, and the trail was swarming with people of every size and age. I enjoyed passing mini-dramas, like changing the channels of a TV: “Dad! I can't do any more!" (sobbing child on mountain bike, looking at blistered hands), “So I told him to take his poodle and get the hell out, and  I’m going to sublet until David’s relocated to North Carolina…” (woman to friend) “Vjor bradoosh porkeeski” (indecipherable Eastern European man to small daughter and large wife). With each snippet, I mused on what the rest of the story might be, and what brought them to this trail today.

What I love about the Tennessee Valley trail is that it starts out very wide on a fire road, then gets narrower as it winds toward the bottom, sandwiched between the valley walls. At the bottom is a stunning small beach where waves crash into the inlet between spectacular multicolored rock formations carved by years of the sea’s force. It’s like a reward, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow realized.

When I arrived at the beach today, somebody had created a massive heart on the sand in rocks, most likely as a gesture on Valentine’s Day a few days ago. But it still works on so many levels. I looked back up the valley, and saw the trail winding to the beach, people moving up or down it. It was, in fact, very much like an artery/vein carrying blood to and from the heart, this vibrant little stretch where people and creek water funneled into an opposing rush of tide. I saw people, myself included, traveling down this path to be reoxygenated by the ocean, and then carrying our reinspired bodies back up the path to our daily lives, reconnected with the source, the power of nature.

As I headed back up the trail I reveled in this analogy and watched the mini-dramas that I passed with that much more interest, aware of how we all traveled down this vein, passed through the same heart, and took its gift up this artery. We stepped into our cars, and carried it through other arteries, into the tiny capillaries that feed different places, different jobs and houses, and wildly different lives. But all connected in this web, meeting at the heart.