Farewell to Companions

Great Frigatebird , juvenile (Fregata minor)

Today is my last full day on Tern Island and the French Frigate Shoals atoll. Tomorrow morning I will be flown out, back to Honolulu.

So this may be my last log entry from this location. It may not be my last log entry about this location.

In Honolulu, I will be away from any computer for a few days.

I have a great many feelings built up inside my heart, inside my soul. I somewhat imagined a "Grand Finale"-type entry for the occassion.

I'm afraid I won't though. Sometimes there are emotions, thoughts, and feelings that we need to keep for ourselves for awhile. I'm at that position at the moment.

Bidding farewell to this atoll, to all the fellow earthlings who truly own this bit of rock, is a deeply personal task for me. I've made my peace to parts of this earth before when a job was on it's final day. I shall do so here as well.

There is a familiarity in this farewell to the land, for it is all one Mother. But different places contain a slightly different shade in response. The response is not verbal, ofcourse. I've found that most responses in this life are not. But it is audible. For the response has been a 4-month long one. My postings only act as a reflecting mirror to it, to the visual. But in the pictures and words I trust you guys could, atleast in the faintest way, hear what I've heard (to be interpreted in your own, personal way), seen some of what I have seen, and taken with you some of what I've taken with me, whether great or small.
White Tern chick, (Gygis alba)

I welcome you to re-read some of my entries for this past 4 months. I plan to.

So as we near the end of our stay at this grain of sand in the middle of the Blue Planet

I would like to thank what has become a readership that has grown beyond any expectations I ever had for this little weblog. The idea, no the fact, that I have anyone reading and enjoying, agreeing with, disagreeing with, and otherwise gleaning something meaningful...anything from my ramblings; to say that it is humbling is far, far too mild.

This blog will not end with my leaving this island.
taxi

It may however slow down until my next job starts. I will be moving to work west of San Diego. What? Yes. West of San Diego. That won't happen for a little over a month.


So as I leave, a question I ask for all of us. What kind of footprint follows your walk through this life, as you trod this planet that so many call home? I ask that of my self every day. I like to think, ecologically speaking it becomes lighter the more I listen to the "response" alluded to earlier in the post. For there are generations, of every species, in waiting. In so many ways, those that count, we are all one in the same.

Faithful readers, well-wishers, family, friends, strangers.....THANK YOU.

Good bye. Wait................

Good bye from Tern Island, French Frigate Shoals atoll, Northwest Island Chain, Hawai'i, USA.

THANK YOU.


-mwyork