When I dropped my towel and headed for the water, I wasn’t really paying attention to anything but the waves. I’d chosen the spot because it was next to a tree and I figured it would be an easy landmark to see from the ocean.

Looking back however, I find it curious that I didn’t notice anything but the tree at the time.

After a few minutes of swimming, I walked back up the beach and laid my towel out to sit and meditate. I wrapped another towel around my shoulders, crossed my legs, rested my hands on my knees, and searched to find my focal point. But when I looked out in front of me, I realized, for the first time, where I actually was.

Scrawled in the sand, at the edge of my towel, was the word “Base.” And next to the word was a stick-drawn line that wrapped around the tree, creating a box. A Base.

I smiled as I thought of the children who must’ve had a wonderful game of tag the day before. And then I saw where I was sitting. I had spread my towel, without realizing, right in the center of their Base.

Base noun \ˈbās\

1 : the bottom of something considered as its support.

2 : the fundamental part of something.

3 : the starting place or goal.

As I continued to take in my surroundings, I then noticed my footprints. One after the other, they led from where I’d dropped my things to the edge of the water, and then returned to where I was currently sitting.

I fixed my eyes ahead and began to breathe. In and out … And in and out. Slowly the waves fell into cadence. Or perhaps it was the other way around. But together, we, the sea and me, just breathed.

I thought about where I’ve been the last couple years. In reality, I all but disappeared. I thought about the descent I made into the depths of my life. I thought about the failure and the disappointment and the fear and the unknowing. I thought about my attempts to clamor, to hide, to pretend. And then I thought about the purpose of it–about the necessity these last two years have been, and will continue to be, to my life, to my character, to my perspective, to my heart.

I thought about the way I’d raised my arms to the horizon only moments earlier as I’d stood there waist deep in the waves. Nothing could have kept me from lifting my hands to the sky that morning. All I wanted was for my arms to grow long enough to wrap around the endlessness in front of me. I wanted to touch it, to hold it, to pull it close to me. For the first time in almost eight hundred days I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t lost, and I wasn’t sad. I was open to the possibility and the uncertainty of it, all of it. But more than that–I was excited about it.

I feel as though I am, quiet certainly, at a starting place, a new beginning–that I’m face to face with the fundamental core of me and my purpose. And there is peace here. I feel hopeful and invigorated with a renewal of the determination that had tucked itself away into hibernation when the clouds descended. Little did I know, that as I emerged from the sea that morning, I was, in every sense, making my way back to base.