The rhythms of the innumerable natural life cycles that surround us every day here on the coast are as staggering in number as they are subtle and rare, and as common as they are shy and fleeting.

The sparkling water diamonds of the Columbia on a windy, sunny day are unmatched. The sun can shine so fiercely at times that you can discern the refracted colors of the rainbow in those sparkling waters.

The sight of dark marlin-blue patches on the water as the wind rips the water’s surface and the bright foamy tide lines marking the edge between the flood tide and the beginning of the ebb tide is enough to make you let off the gas and pull over just to watch, to marvel and take it all in.

While the dazzling white seabirds dive and soar and bank steeply as they pitch over and plunge to the big river for a meal, all is colored. The entire river and sky, mountains and ocean, birds and small shiny fish all are drawn from the same working hue, the same soft tint. While along the river’s edges, all is alight in brilliant white diamonds, while wave after eternal wave carries its small cargo of sunlight to shore.

The rhythms of the river are endless and forever changing. She can be a gentle pond one moment and a howling, dangerous gray lady the next. She can show us her finest colors while she dangles wisps of enticing fair skies laced with streaming clouds one afternoon, and on the next, make gray seasoned seafarers swear aloud that they will never again take her peaceful facade for granted.

The seabirds load up with bait fish and head for their nests where the nestlings await their delivery, the same delivery has been going on here year after year for several million years.

The huge looming Pacific, just beyond the river’s grasp, affects all life here. The cold, the salt, the sky and the rain. The wind and more wind, and of course, the surf. At times, when the surf invades the realm of the river, the struggle is immense. Truly a clash of Titans pitting wave against wave and current against tide.

Giant powerful natural forces grappling in a slow deliberate embrace as tiny baby seabirds call to their parents for food, while icy water diamonds and geese calling from loose formations high above all float slowly to earth. Crystalline color glistens from the twinkling wind waves, and the tireless cycling of tide currents obediently following their masters, the moon and sun as they fly overhead, are all together now, and happen in a heartbeat.

Some heartbeats are slow, as in the ponderous movement of glaciers, or the slow but constant erosion of basalt by the pounding surf. Other heartbeats may mark the passing by of a pod of gray whales with their huge friendly old eyes and still others, like the darting eyes of hummingbirds as they vie for a spot at our feeders, all these myriad heartbeats, the very pulse of Mother Nature, blend and whirl and meld into a fabric of life that is astonishing. Breathe it all in.

In this age, peace is in increasingly short supply, and if there is peace to be found anywhere, it is at this shore.

Check out our new weekly nature movie at:

(http://home.pacifier.com/~sparks/wildlife!!.html)

Craig Sparks is director of NAWA, a filmmaker, freelance writer and wildlife rehabilitator.

Found injured wildlife? Questions? Call the Wildlife Center at 665-3595 or send an e-mail to: sparks@pacifier.com.