A young girl made her way down to the beach after a powerful storm.  There were piles of starfish everywhere. Now the tide was streaming out leaving the starfish marooned on the land. So the girl began gently tossing the starfish into the retreating surf.

Then a man walked up and found her busy at work. Looking along the shore, he asked the little girl, "Don't you see how many starfish are on this beach? Far too many for you to rescue. No one can save them."

The girl stood and tossed another starfish into the sea and said to the man, "Saved that one."

I heard this story on the radio a few days ago. It sang to me, a rich harmony. I was driving at the time. When I got home, I wrote down what I remembered of it.

Then I searched online and made the easy discovery of Loren Eiseley (1907-1977),[1] who wrote “The Star Thrower”[2].

Mr. Eiseley’s narrator observes:

“We had lost our way, I thought, but we had kept, some of us, the memory of the perfect circle of compassion from life to death and back to life again.”

Suddenly my mind spun like a starfish rescued into the waves. The universe was a vast cycle of tidal energy.  A giant vortex of birds arose to whip the heavens. And for a wild moment there was peace.


[1] https://www.eiseley.org/ - Essayist, Philosopher and Literary Naturalist; website contains a teacher’s guide
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Thrower - discussion of Eiseley’s story and adaptations