Alligator roulette

MURRELLS INLET — A cool breeze rustles the stalks of marsh grass towering over my head. I'm thankful for the briskness in the air that keeps the mosquitoes and other beach-loving insects at bay on this sheltered marsh trail at Huntington Beach State Park. I chose this short nature path for my meditative walk today for its calmness.

My mantra or theme for the day is peace.

The trail is perfect with its padding of sand and pine straw carpeting. I listen to a chatter of chirping that comes from all corners as tiny marsh birds skitter about like leaves in a March wind. I feel amphibious, the heavy salt air filling my lungs as I practice deep breathing, the exhalations bringing a deep relaxation.

In an instant, it all changes.

A shrieking cry of distress stops the chattering. I listen closer to see if it's some kind of flamboyant mating ritual or a territorial bird fight. The sound seems to be coming from the marsh. I start toward it, but then it disappears, muted, like a television shut off during a horror scene. The silence is eerie with only the rustling of reeds. I decide to keep walking. Investigating foul play doesn't fit my "theme" for today.

I freeze as the sound pierces the air again. The terror in the cry stirs a memory deep within. I push it back and feel it lingering at the edges of my mind. I ignore it to focus on the sound. Curiosity winning out, I turn around again to move toward the terrifying pitch. A slender path cuts through a thatch of towering reeds. I make my way through until I reach the edge of the black saltwater estuary.

Emerging from the reeds, the light is blinding, illuminating the green and yellow van Gogh palette of marsh grasses. In the distance, I can make out black wings frantically thrashing about as if a bird's gone crazy. I wonder if it's just having trouble getting aloft or if it's been ambushed by an alligator. The bird goes under, completely, to re-emerge seconds later, thrashing harder.

The black wings go under again, replaced seconds later by a low, floating mound gliding smoothly in my direction. The alligator theory is gaining ground. I half-run back to the path, trying to shake off the image. My heart beat slows as a few birds brave singing again. I try settling back into nature as it settles back into its routine, minus a member of its waterfowl.

Refocusing on my theme, I breathe in peace. On the exhale, the memory I had stuffed away so neatly awakens. I see an image of blood drenching the front of my shirt. This is the danger of practicing meditative walking. There's time for all the stuff best not thought of to float up like flotsam. This image is 14 years old, yet as fresh as if it just happened.

This time I let my mind rush back, and it's as if I'm there again, and no time has passed. It's a country picnic with the charred smell of hot dogs drifting in the air. I hold the hands of my 1-year-old, who's breaking my back in his persistent efforts to learn to walk, my thumbs squeezed so hard by his tightly curled fingers that the tips look like red marbles. A blur of motion in my peripheral vision my only warning, I look down to the thin air where my son was. Though I see he's now being shaken in the air like a rag doll in the jaws of a Rottweiler, it doesn't compute. My heart has no language to see.

I blame the alligator for this unleashing. This is why I don't watch the predator shows on National Geographic. My son, now 15, will be learning to drive soon, but from time to time, I still finger the smooth white scar on his back, a personal ritual of appreciation — of his life and the moments granted.

It brings to mind questions of why God allows suffering and evil and freak accidents and roulette games with predators. The short, powerful book "The Will of God" by Leslie D. Weatherhead offers one of the best explanations I've read that offers light on the intentional, circumstantial and ultimate wills of God. It's an issue all believers wrestle when loss or adversity strikes in an effort to reconcile faith and suffering. We have to find a way of living with it that doesn't sap the joy from our bones or power from our faith.

Deep down, we know how it should be — of how a world described in Isaiah 11 of wolves living with lambs and lions eating hay is a world of divine intention. Yet that's not our world.

For the time being, we can rage at what can't be understood or accept it. I think this universal struggle is what makes the Serenity Prayer so popular with its call for wisdom to know what to accept and what to change in life. I was surprised to learn a few years ago that there is a second half to it, including this section:

Living one day at a time,

enjoying one moment at a time,

accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,

taking this sinful world as it is,

not as I would have it ...

The thought makes me smile as I realize I'm back to my walk's theme of peace. I bask in the heat as I come into a clearing and catch a gentle sea wind. An egret, blindingly white, coasts in, landing like a feather. I watch the grace and ease and reflect on how letting go is the key.

Fighting grief and trauma is like battling a rip current. Letting go and floating with it is how to survive it. The more it's fought, the more dangerous it gets. There have been times when I thought accepting "what is" would kill me. In hindsight, I can see it was struggling to change what could not be changed that brought so much more suffering. The older I get, the more I find surrender to be the critical part in exercising faith. The biblical character Job, after much analyzing and advice from friends, finds himself at that point. He surrenders before he can begin to mend his crushed spirit. It doesn't change the losses in his story, though, including the deaths of his children.

There's one less bird in the pond today, and a happier alligator.

I'm glad to have been a witness to the bird's last moment, and in some perverse way to the haunting beauty of the reptile that ate him, that symbol of our shadowy sides. I'm sure I'll trace the scar on my son's back tonight in reverence of the gift of his life and the gift of the moment. In the end, maybe a reverent mindfulness is the greatest lesson that suffering can give us — that and compassion.

Dawn Brazell is a freelance writer in Charleston.