The Beach Speaks: Community, Connection, and Hope with Paige Friend

Today I'm taking a moment to acknowledge and learn from a podcaster  who reminded me of the importance of connecting with the natural world.  Paige Friend hosts "The Beach Speaks", a podcast that centers around the  universal appeal of the beach and its calming effects. Through her  episodes, Paige delves into personal connections to the beach, reminding  us to think about the ocean and its miraculous role in our  ecosystems and our psyches. Using stories, community  engagement, and hope-driven messages about the ocean and the beach, the  Paige aims to foster a deeper relationship with nature and encourage  proactive awareness among her listeners.

00:00 Nature's influence: Beach, redwood, healing, inspiration.

06:35 Beach closure surprised us; nature remains essential.

08:17 Single-use plastics impact environment; Beaches Go Green.

11:23 Kayaking trip lacked expected manatees, disappointment ensued.

16:14 Morning beach ritual interrupted by construction work.

17:45 Beach preservation and pollution's interconnection, policy needed.

21:56 Ocean sounds soothe and benefit our minds.

25:47 Kayak Titusville: bioluminescence, Bird Island, conservation concerns.

31:24 Engage with The Beach Speaks via website.

32:41 Art Heals All Wounds: Beaches connect us all.

Don't forget to go to my website and leave me YOUR story of belonging to feature on a future episode!

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Transcript

Pam Uzzell, host [00:00:12]:
Do you believe art can change the world? So do I! On this show, we meet artists whose work is doing just that. Welcome to Art Heals All Wounds. I'm your host, Pam Yuzell. I remember, during the pandemic, being at home and wishing I could be just about anywhere else. One day, I found a podcast with a host with an amazing voice, talking about the beach. This podcast is called The Beach Speaks, and it's hosted by Paige Friend, who lives next to the beach in Florida. Every episode, she either has guests who talk about their connection to the beach, or solo episodes talking about the role of the beach in her life and how important her connection to it is.

Pam Uzzell, host [00:01:17]:
And not just like, oh, she loves the beach, but the beach is how Paige understands herself and the world. At the end of each episode, Paige says, the beach is speaking. Are you listening? Each time I thought, oh, I wish I could be at the beach right now listening to it speak. At a certain point, I realized that I was missing the message of the podcast. What part of the natural world inspired me and centered me and healed me? That could be almost anything, even wildflowers pushing up in the yard attracting bees and butterflies. Because of listening to this podcast, I started spending more time in the redwood groves here in Oakland and noticing that these majestic trees and the stream flowing through them were also speaking, if I listened. This past month, with hurricanes Helene and Milton hitting Florida and other parts of the southeast, I thought and worried about Paige a lot. I'm happy to say that Paige is safe.

Pam Uzzell, host [00:02:31]:
I'm sharing this conversation that she and I had well before the hurricanes hit. You wanna know how you can really help me keep this show going? Follow me on your favorite listening app. So easy. Right? And if you really wanna give the show a boost, leave me a 5 star rating or review. Hi, Paige. It is really great to be seeing you this morning and talking to you. Thank you for coming on to Art Heals All Wounds. Can you introduce yourself and tell people who you are and what you do?

Paige Friend,  [00:03:09]:
Absolutely. It is a pleasure to be on your podcast, Pam. You were a wonderful guest on my podcast which is The Beach Speaks and it's a podcast about sharing stories about the beach and our connection to it. And you had a lovely story about your memories of the beach here on the east coast and then me on the west coast and the difference between it. And I was really delighted that you asked me to come on and talk about how the beach speaks to me and all that's involved.

Pam Uzzell, host [00:03:43]:
Well, it's interesting. You know, I first heard your show during the pandemic and that was when one of the few places we could really go were the natural spaces that we could find outdoors. And I'm not far from a beach, but I'm also not right next door. But you made me think about the natural world of so many places. Like where do I go to get rejuvenated, and what I would feel like if those spaces were to disappear. And I just thought this podcast is so translatable into any natural space that really is your space.

Paige Friend,  [00:04:24]:
Yeah. Yeah. I like to say, if you can't get to the beach, I'll bring the beach to you. And the beach doesn't necessarily have to mean the physical beach. It's what the beach means to you and what it represents. And so sometimes when you can't be at the beach, just the sound, I put the sound of waves in my episodes, so at least you have that to kind of tune into. And I'd like to think that my voice will help soothe and calm you if you're needing a little of that in your life. I live just a few blocks from the beach and, wasn't always so.

Paige Friend,  [00:05:04]:
I grew up in the mountains of Pennsylvania and I just always wanted to be at the beach. I would just beg my parents in the summer, can we please go to the beach? And over the years of my journeying through adulthood, I finally ended up in Florida, in Orlando, somewhat close to the beach, but not quite. And I like to tell my story about how one morning I woke up and thought, no, this is not what I want. I want to meet my soul mate, quit my 9 to 5 and move to the beach. Wow. Yeah. And I, I ended up doing all 3. So now I'm here at the beach and I'm thinking, this is so amazing that I've I've gone through this journey and here I've ended up in the place that really means something to me.

Paige Friend,  [00:05:57]:
And it speaks of hope and possibility and not just the the physical aspects of being at the beach. And I thought, how can I share this with other people? I it just kind of felt selfish to to keep this all to myself. So when you say during the pandemic, when you started listening, that was really when I put some intention into the podcast. Because before that I thought, oh, I'm just going to do a podcast about the beach and talk to people about the beach. But then, yes, there was that need for the space where we could feel safe and we could feel healthy. And believe it or not, they closed our beach for a couple of weeks, much to our surprise because we were all thinking, well, how can the beach be a dangerous place to to be? However, I I guess, yeah, we just didn't know what what to do. So I would sneak out there as far as I could go because I I just had to be near it. And I think it was that sense of being with nature and that what it brings to us in that natural space.

Paige Friend,  [00:07:09]:
It doesn't have to be the beach for everybody, but I've been thinking a lot about water lately. And most of us, when we think about the beach, we think about the ocean. There's always water involved, I think. And that is so important to all of us. And Florida being almost all surrounded in all ways with water. It is so important to our environment and our well-being here where we live. And I've really been concerned about that. It's becoming a bit of a problem.

Pam Uzzell, host [00:07:49]:
Right. Well, I would love to hear more about that concern because yeah. I mean, in Florida, there's obviously the flooding issues. There's the loss of the sort of natural protection against floods, against storms. There's like a this major tension almost between freshwater and saltwater. You live there, so I'd love to hear more what concerns you.

Paige Friend,  [00:08:17]:
Well, certainly what came to my attention it's interesting when you don't live at the beach or where you don't live near a waterway that is important to the environment. If you live in the city or in the midwest and or in the mountains, you don't really think about these things as much. But the plastic, single use plastic in the ocean, that became really important to me once I got here because I would see the garbage that came up. We like to think that we take care of our beaches, and I think the people here that that live here were cognizant of picking up our trash and and all of that, but still and 4th July is coming up and the day after the holiday, there's just so much trash on the beach. We all 100 of us get out there and start picking things up. But the single use plastics that were invading our, our waterways certainly became an issue for me. We have a woman that I interviewed early on in my podcast that watched that movie A Plastic Ocean and was so upset and she thought somebody has to do something about that. Why are we doing anything about that here in our community? So she started a movement and it's now a nonprofit called Beaches Go Green and she educates people on single use plastics, recycling.

Paige Friend,  [00:09:44]:
She even got her neighborhood to put up cigarette butt holders because that's one thing. That's another thing you don't really think about. It's people treat the beach like an ashtray. They just throw their cigarette butts in and that is really detrimental to the ecosystem. We have, of course, climate change, we can't ignore that with the oceans rising. It's just a minute amount every year, but as it rises we think, Oh, that's, you know, in, in the north it, you know, the ice flows and all that are starting to melt, but it affects the ocean rise down here in Florida and parts of Miami are going to probably be underwater not too soon. And we have the occurrence of more weather phenomena. Hurricanes are stronger, which erode the coastline.

Paige Friend,  [00:10:45]:
It's not, something that's unusual to Florida. We have hurricanes such as other places have their issues with the climate. However, the detriment to the coastal areas is such that our wildlife doesn't have a place to to go. I was made aware of it. It just broke my heart. We love to go to the freshwater springs. A lot of people don't know, but Florida has some beautiful freshwater springs and the rivers and all of that, as well as around the coast and the ocean. And we love to go kayaking, and the manatees all congregate at this one spring that we want to went to go to.

Paige Friend,  [00:11:32]:
We brought a friend from who had lived in Nevada and no, I'm sorry, Arizona, and he wanted to experience the manatees. So we said, oh, there's this great place and they all gather together and you can just paddle around with them and it's great.' So we went, we were all excited. There were no manatees and usually there's like 100 of them. And we're looking at each other and I felt so bad for Josh. I said, I'm sorry, but this is not the usual thing. Somebody had said, well, there are 2, if you paddle maybe another half a mile down the the river that are they're tagged. They have a little tag and they're kind of swimming around in this one little cove if you wanna see humanity. So we paddled down there and we we got close and there was a gentleman on the, the water.

Paige Friend,  [00:12:25]:
Look, and he was telling us about these 2 manatees. He said, Yeah, they just released them from the aquarium where they had been rescued. And so now that they're better, they put they tag them so they could track them, and they were hoping that then they would swim down the river and join all their manatee friends and then that they would all go together. But every time these two manatees would move out of the cove, the people would scare them and they'd swim away. I just felt so bad. I thought, we don't want to scare them. And also, they were running out of food to eat. And that was one reason they all kind of went off and onto into the ocean because there had been hurricanes and they eroded the seagrass and they just were running out of food.

Paige Friend,  [00:13:15]:
So they had to leave that area earlier than than we expected. So that personally just- it broke my heart that they- and I thought what are we gonna do with these 2 manatees that are stranded? I guess they were going to bring them back to the aquarium. I don't really know. It's really kind of sad. Wow. Yeah. We have things like red tide, which occurs mostly in the gulf waters. It's as the waters get warm and we have a lot of fertilizer that comes into our water system through, the rivers, and it's not necessarily just on the coastline.

Paige Friend,  [00:13:55]:
I mean, you don't think about the farms and all of that that are further inland, but we have a lot of fertilizer coming into our water system and that just helps to foster the algae that normally grows during that time to produce more and more and more until it basically takes the oxygen away from the fish and all that, and it just becomes a huge problem. The the fish are dying. It becomes a respiratory problem for people breathe breathing in this, air. And it affects our livelihoods in in a lot of ways. The tourists don't wanna come. Nobody wants to be at a beach that's has fish washed up on the shore and smells bad and you can't breathe. You know, it's that's that's one thing. Here on the East Coast, I'm in Jacksonville Beach, we don't have so much of that as I think the weather phenomenon we have that will erode the beach and the dunes.

Paige Friend,  [00:15:01]:
And, certainly, that is something we're concerned about for our sea turtle population. And, also, may we have a fair number of homes that are right there on in the edge. And there are some that are just dangerously ready to just like fall right into the water. And right now they're doing, reclamation of the beach. And some people think, oh, they're just gonna bring in sand and trucks and dump it. But what they do is they they dredge out in the ocean. There's this huge ship you can see, and it has a pipeline that runs through the water up to the coast. And it's basically basically like a reverse vacuum cleaner.

Paige Friend,  [00:15:47]:
So it just pulls up the sand from the ocean under the bottom of the ocean and siphons it out to to the beach and it's swept up to build up the dunes. So that's to protect the environment. It makes our beach a little wider. So when there are storms, we don't have so much erosion and the sea turtles and the seagrass has a place to grow and the sea turtles have a place to nest and we can all still enjoy everything. So that that's what's going on right now. And personally, I have a special place that I like to go, beach access. And I went out the other day and I really wasn't even thinking about this. It was my morning ritual to get up and go out and watch the sunrise and experience some peace and quiet.

Paige Friend,  [00:16:35]:
So I go to this particular beach access and I noticed that part of it is kind of blocked off, but the majority of it isn't. And I thought, well, maybe they were just blocking off the walkway. So I've just walked out onto the beach and lo and behold, I walked out right into the area where there this all this machinery and they're just digging up the sand and there's a a police vehicle monitoring people coming out and this woman rolls her window down. She says, you can't be here right now. You need to move. And I thought, I don't want to. I just it was such a disruption to to my soul at the moment. I wanted to go out for peace and quiet and I didn't wanna be run off the beach at the moment.

Paige Friend,  [00:17:18]:
So I ended up going to another part, it wasn't like they had the whole part blocked off. But it's those times where I have to kinda remember, okay, yeah, it's a minor inconvenience for me, maybe a little disruption of my serenity, but in the grander scheme, this is what we need in order to preserve all that. So that's just some of the things that are on my mind. I could go on and on. I don't know if you have any questions about anything in particular.

Pam Uzzell, host [00:17:45]:
One thing I'm I'm still going back to you saying that you wanna bring the beach to people and that is really important. Obviously, we are probably not all going to go move to a beach because we love the beach which maybe there are a handful of people who don't love the beach, but I don't know them. Maybe when we are considering, okay, what are some ways we could change our farming practices to not create this red tide by fertilizer runoff? Maybe what are some things we could be doing again? You know, I, the one thing I think about in Florida is the loss of the mangrove trees that really created this great way to both protect against storms but also help with flooding. One thing I wish is that all of our lawmakers would think about the beach as they are creating policy and deciding what sorts of tools and chemicals and things are in fact detrimental in all the ways that they go downstream. And I'm just thinking about this is about air, but yesterday the Supreme Court decided that states who are still have coal fired plants, there was a ruling passed saying that they have to be responsible for how it goes downwind to other states who do not who are not burning coal. And the Supreme Court struck that down and said nope, burn it all you want. And so other states who perhaps are trying to have cleaner energy are still going to get the effects of pollution. And I feel like, yes, the beaches may seem like a small sliver of our reality, but in fact everything is interconnected.

Pam Uzzell, host [00:19:39]:
Absolutely. So I do like this goal of bringing the beach to people. And what I like about your show is that you have people share really sort of formative experiences at the beach. That's what I like about your show. But I'm also just wondering about what you feel these formative experiences might do for people.

Paige Friend,  [00:20:06]:
I was thinking about why do we love the beach so much? Like you said, you don't know too many people when you say something about the beach. Almost everybody I know says, Oh, I love the beach. Or they had, they have some recollection of a beach visit, even if it was just one time or people who have actually never been and just are dying to go. And what it means to me, I think I spoke earlier about it being a, a larger sense of hope and possibility because there is that feeling you have when you step out onto into the sand and look out over the horizon. Or, I mean, even if you're on the west coast and it's a bunch of rocks and you, you have all that ocean spray and it's cold, but you know, you're not but still looking at the horizon and feeling that energy and all that's possible because you just see out into infinity almost. And for me, I had such a desire to be here. I had to make it happen. I had to imagine that possibility.

Paige Friend,  [00:21:19]:
And in order to make it happen, you know, thoughts or things. I had to get my my mindset on, yes, I can do this. Because a lot of people say, Oh, I would love to be at the beach. I would love to live at the beach, but someday or I'll never be able to do that. Well, for me, there was no someday, it had to be today. And in order to do that, I had to kind of form that mindset. So I like to help people connect through their stories about the beach, and that kind of puts your mind there even if you can't be there. A lot of people say, I love to go to sleep with the sound of the ocean.

Paige Friend,  [00:22:00]:
And why is that? Because the beach and the water, there's the sound that resonates with all of us. And I keep thinking about water and the ocean, especially the benefits of being in or near on water, the blue mind, as well as Jay Nichols wrote about in a book that has been very informative to me lately, how it feel the salt in the in the air, the negative ions, the physical benefits are immense. The repetition of the sound of the waves, our our brains just like to hear that repetition. It makes us feel safe and soothing. So whether you're just listening to it or you're actually physically out there watching the waves. And I think most people who have been in the ocean or the Gulf or wherever the a lake where that has waves, you could just feel that energy. We're we're mostly water, our bodies. And we were born in water.

Paige Friend,  [00:23:10]:
It's it's just that sense of peace and calm and connectedness. I think that the beach and brings to me a sense of being connected, connected with myself, connected with others, with my community, and connected with the well-being of the world because we we certainly are a part of this big globe that is mostly water. And the the beach is not just here in Florida, it is all over the world.

Pam Uzzell, host [00:23:47]:
I love that you said we were born in water. And you know, we were and some of our relatives never left the water. Some left and went back. You know, when we think about the fact that in all of wildlife are our cousins, really. And would you treat your cousin's home, you know, the way that we sometimes treat the ocean? And then also that it is our ancestral place is the ocean.

Paige Friend,  [00:24:19]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Pam Uzzell, host [00:24:20]:
I also love you said thoughts are things. And I think that that's a really important thing thing to think about in talking about climate change and the environment is that we have to think it first in order to prevent any more damage. I mean, we've gone past, you know, we should have been phasing out fossil fuels and plastics several decades ago. We didn't. But how are we, meaning all living creatures, gonna survive on this planet from here on out?

Paige Friend,  [00:25:00]:
Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like out of sight out of mind. Well, it's not not in my backyard, so I'm not really too worried about it. And we, we do need to be concerned. And one thing that encourages me like NASA, for instance, we've had the the space shuttle operation. I mean, we've had there all of those years we've had rockets going off and everything and that's certainly been a disruption to the ecosystem. However, in order for NASA to operate, they made a deal long ago with the government that I guess they were part of the government, but that they would make all the what they could do to help sustain the environment around that area.

Paige Friend,  [00:25:47]:
So if you you can go and kayak around that outside of the where the launching pad is or used to be in Titusville through the mangroves, and there's bioluminescence and there's a, they call it bird island and it was man made. They created it so that the birds would have a place to go. And it's just absolutely you can just kayak, canoe or well, you probably wouldn't want to canoe, kayak around it and see all these beautiful birds just in a natural habitat as much as one can have. But there are places that we preserve. There are a lot of preserves here in Florida, and we want to make sure that they are they stay that way. I think that we do have, even here and where I live, a sense of out of sight, out of minds in some respects, especially inland. The question had been asked in a forum when I was in Orlando. I forget what I was listening to, but they were asking a question about our water supply and were we concerned about our water supply and people were was that like a political issue at the time or something? And people were kind of looking at each other like, I never really thought about that.

Paige Friend,  [00:27:13]:
The water just comes to us, you know. They don't even know where the aquifers were or was that where we got our water? And what's happening there? We need to keep it present in mind. And I hope that with the podcast and that it's, I really want it to be something where you can listen to and be reminded of the time you've spent at the beach and what it really means to you. And then maybe it'll bring into your mind, oh, yeah, the beach, the ocean, the ocean life. And then we really do need to preserve that. We need to be cognizant of keeping that, not just for our benefit, for some nice place to go, but really for the health and our well-being and the well-being of the planet. Right. Yeah.

Paige Friend,  [00:28:08]:
Yeah. And that we're connected. When people tell their stories about the beach, and I'm sure you in listening some of the episodes, you've been able to relate to, Oh, yeah. I remember. Or that reminds me. And that's one of the things I love about it is it connects us. There it's just something about the beach and everyone's story about it that you can connect to. And then you feel that greater connectedness.

Paige Friend,  [00:28:36]:
And I love that. The community. That's really what I wanna build with this podcast is community.

Pam Uzzell, host [00:28:44]:
Yeah. And to help us, even if we live upstream of the beach to think about the repercussions of our actions. And yeah, even if Florida were to outlaw fossil fuels tomorrow, the fossil fuels being burnt in other parts of the world are going to affect the beach, which is why this idea of community, changing stories, and making our thoughts into the thing that's going to help us preserve our natural spaces is so important. Mhmm. And I do I love your show. I do love your voice. Your voice is very calming. Even when you're when you're talking about some of the single use plastics and manatees and things, which also breaks my heart.

Pam Uzzell, host [00:29:34]:
I don't know. I think you're a good messenger for this in that it would be very hard for people to accuse you of trying to use scare tactics as opposed to using hope tactics, which I do. Oh, I

Paige Friend,  [00:29:47]:
like that. Hope tactics.

Pam Uzzell, host [00:29:48]:
Yeah. Yes. Yes. Well, Paige, tell people where they can find the Beach Speaks and maybe connect with you. And if they have their own beach story, I know that you are very open to letting people come and share their connection with the beach.

Paige Friend,  [00:30:05]:
Absolutely. I welcome anyone who has a story to tell about their experience with the beach, whether it's just a small little vignette or if you have an inspiration that maybe you have a business that was inspired by the beach. It doesn't have to be that large or small. It can be just a just a story. You can find me on the web at the beachspeaks.com. I'm on all the podcast players, The Beach Speaks. I'm on Instagram and Facebook. I don't spend a whole lot of time on Instagram and Facebook.

Paige Friend,  [00:30:38]:
My general intention there is to just post pretty pictures of the beach and videos and things that you're are lovely to look at and inspire you and, like I said, bring the beach to you. So I do interact with people there on the socials as well, however, if you go to my website the beachspeaks.com there is a voicemail button and if you click on that there's opportunity for you to just record a quick voicemail and it can be something that you loved about the beach or story. You can also reach out to me to be a guest. I welcome any and all people. I've had authors one that recently contacted me and her book isn't necessarily about the beach, but it's related and it's the scene is is set at the beach. And she said, well, I don't know if this would be good. I said, are you kidding? It's a beach. It's a story.

Paige Friend,  [00:31:33]:
It's a fabulous beach read. Let's we need to talk. So that's that's really where you can you can find me. Or if you're in Jacksonville Beach, that you'll see me there.

Pam Uzzell, host [00:31:47]:
Well, I would love for you to do on your podcast, you always say, the Beach is speaking. Are you listening? And your wonderful voice. Would you do that to close the show?

Paige Friend,  [00:31:57]:
The Beach is speaking. Are you listening?

Pam Uzzell, host [00:32:04]:
You're listening to art heals all wounds. Thank you so much to Paige Friend, host of The Beach Speaks, for sharing her thoughts and experiences living next to a beach during these times. Last year, I took a cross country trip from Miami to the Bay Area, and as I drove through Florida, I just kept thinking, wow. It's so beautiful here. Not just the beaches, but places like Tallahassee, a city I'd never been to before, which turned out to be one of my favorite places that we stopped. If you've never driven across country, I highly recommend it. It's a great reminder that we are all in this together. And wherever we live, we're all upstream from the beach, and the beach is speaking.

Pam Uzzell, host [00:33:18]:
What's speaking to you these days? Is nature or creativity helping you heal? I'd love to hear your story and share it on the show. If you go to my website, arthealsallwoundspodcast.com, you'll see a place where you can leave a voice mail. If you feel able to, you can also leave me a donation to help with expenses on this show. Just click on the buy me a coffee at the top of the page. This show is completely independent, so anything you leave helps me a lot. Thanks for listening. The music you've heard in this podcast is by Quetza and loboloco. This podcast was edited by Eva Hristova.