shemanifesto

[shemanifesto]

Pebble Beach

It's surprising what you will find when you just start putting words on paper. I found healing, what will you find? Here's a second draft edit from a first draft meandering. It may not end up in the manifesto but it was fun to go back in time and then take the morning to try and polish up a pretty rough draft, as all first drafts should be. Pebble Beach I started to write this manifesto because there’a a time factor that older people start feeling, the ticking clock of mortality and the reminder of deeds unaccomplished. An alarm signalling that you just had to get it done, somehow, someway. The grave was calling and the earth would smother your voice, and end the hope of accomplishing the deeds that you had promised yourself would get done. My alarm bell was going off so often and at such a high pitch, I could not concentrate on the life I was comfortably living at the time. As I worked on the manifesto that would share with the world my insights about life, and build a call to action for women who wished to move into a more authentic way of living, I meandered back in time. After several weeks of writing, I started to heal in places that I didn’t even know were hurting. I am not a cryer, never have been. If I do cry it is a very short process. In writing the first draft of “She Manifesto” there were days I just rambled on about whatever had peaked my interest. On one of those days of writing, as per usual, I became distracted with social media. A friend had posted a short video on Facebook about a recent rock collecting trip to the shores of Lake Superior. I watched the video and instantly felt a pang of nostalgia that cut deep into my heart. Without hesitation and with a sense of unwarranted urgency I asked her where the video had been taken, she replied, it’s Pebble Beach. You will not find my Pebble Beach on a quick google search. Pebble Beach is a beach in Marathon, Ontario at the end of Howe Street, just past the Royal Canadian Legion. As you walk past the legion you are walking towards the largest fresh water lake in the world, you are walking towards Lake Superior. This is the lake that constantly called out to me when I lived in Marathon in the late 1970’s in a dilapidated trailer court near its shores. The trailer, located on a potholed dirt road up from Howe Street, was small and drab, but large enough for me and my first love to begin our new life together. The property the trailer sat on had a long and narrow back yard, with friendly neighbours. Near the back of the yard behind the fence, lay the majestic Boreal Forest and just past this swath of forest was part of the shoreline of Lake Superior and home to Pebble Beach. The shores of Lake Superior boast 4385 kilometers of shoreline and I had instantly recognized this 60 feet of beach with smooth rocks piled side by side, one on top of the other, that the folk in Marathon had nicknamed pebbles. These were not the pebbles of humans, they were the pebbles of a giant unforgiving lake that I had lived next to when I was a young woman and in love for the first time. It was a short walk to Pebble Beach, a stunningly beautiful piece of shoreline where on November 10, 1975, I stood alongside an awestruck community as we watched a bitter storm rage upon her waters. No one knew that as we were watching this powerful display of nature that the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a great lakes freighter, was sinking. We would learn the next day that the entire crew of twenty-nine men had lost their lives and four days later news would reach the media that the Edmund Fitzgerald, the solid steel Queen of the Lakes had been broken in two. We were all devastated. So here I am forty-five years later remembering that force of nature, that beach of water and stone, and that first love who betrayed my heart while walking up from Pebble Beach with another woman. Unlike the Queen who still lays broken in the deep, I lived on and the two pieces of my broken heart mended. I've come to appreciate this meandering manifesto and my short attention span that has allowed me to hear the

call of Pebble Beach once more. It may be time for a road trip. © Lori Paras

#pebblebeach #shemanifesto #loriparas #shelife