This site shows tracking information for a handful of Sharks around the world.  I've been following Beamer for a little while.  He was up near Portland, Maine for a time (go Sea Dogs!) but he's been swimming south for the last couple months.  Recently he went past Bermuda, and now he's heading south, toward the Puerto Rico Trench.

Sometimes I'll stop myself in a meeting and wonder for a second about Beamer.  Where he is.  What he's doing.  Last night I woke up and stumbled through the darkness to get a glass of water.  And in that same moment there was a 200 pound Blue Shark named Beamer weaving his way through black ocean.  That's where he is.  All the time.  Right now.  It's weird isn't it?  The variety of life's experiences.

During the Cold War, barbed wire and an electric fence divided Eastern Europe from the West. In addition to separating people, the fence also split the population of Red Deer. But deer migration paths are a learned trait, taught to each generation by the last. So Red Deer in the region still refuse to cross the old lines, even though the fence has been down for decades now. And so the Iron Curtain still exists in some sense. It lives on in the minds of deer.

A lesson, I think, on ripple effects. Those waves get into the strangest places. But also on the importance of leveling old walls. Especially the ones in your head.