Tag Archives: ocean

Along the Central Coast

31 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by in Travel

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Three weeks in California took us north from LA along the central coast, through Santa Barbara, Big Sur, and Santa Cruz, past San Francisco and up to Point Reyes National Park, before cutting east to Tahoe City, and then south again to Joshua Tree before finally returning to the airport last Wednesday.

Waylon meets the waves at El Capitan State Beach

Waylon meets the waves at El Capitan State Beach

hiking to a boulder field

hiking to a boulder field

Egret at sunset

Egret at sunset

Big Sur

Big Sur

camping among the redwoods

camping among the redwoods

bouldering at Castle Rock SP

bouldering at Castle Rock SP

evening on the ocean

evening on the ocean

view from our camp

view from our camp

hot springs running into a river

Buckeye hot springs, on the east side of the Sierras heading to Joshua Tree

camp

camp

A young Joshua Tree

A young Joshua Tree

nap time in Joshua Tree National Park

nap time in Joshua Tree National Park

Joshua Trees

Joshua Trees

And now we are home, far from the 70 degree warmth of LA, heated instead by our wood stove as smoke rises in the single-digit air.  And we’re happy.  Maybe it’s the vitamin D we soaked up out west that still pumps through our bodies, but I think it’s more the fact that we are in the place we created, the place we chose to put our roots down.  While we let those roots stretch across the country, they always pull us back.

We celebrated our homecoming with a snowshoe through the forest yesterday, and as the dogs leapt and bounced through the fresh snow, we turned to the world at hand: white, bare, open.  The perfect canvas to start our dreams for another year on this land.

along for the snowshoe

along for the snowshoe

Writing on the Beach, the First of March

01 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by in Nature/Environment, Writing

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We’re on vacation. 

In the midst of garden planning and deciding when to fire up the wood stove in the seed house, we realized it was our last shot at one for the next few months.  So we left Vermont on Wednesday, and now here we are, in Cape May, New Jersey.  The bird observatory is still quiet as the spring migration is yet to commence in earnest, but the salt water, sand and sea birds are invigorating none the less. Edge’s parents have a condo here, so not only does Waylon get to see the ocean, but he gets to spend time with Gammy and Gampy, too, which means Mama and Papa get to spend time alone together.

We walked on the beach this afternoon, barefoot in the sun-warmed sand.  We drew a flower, branching and tall, in the sand, and I wrote:

I AM: LOVE, FREE, IMPERMANENT

High tide will come and wash my words away.  There is something invigorating about this.  As if it is a rebellious act, a person not focused on the eternal, but rather the momentary.  How much of what we do is for posterity–when do we instead let ourselves be washed away, wiped clean without resistance?

Writing on the beach, I left something of myself in the sand, knowing the sand will in turn release it to the water, and my sentiment will be carried away to float out wherever it may.

After, I faced the sea, the white fringed waves crashing and stretching up toward us.  “I bet the water is really cold,” I said.

“As cold as it can be.  Only one way to find out,” Edge said.

So we rolled up our pants and walked towards it, the water retreating as we approached, then surging forward again, enveloping our ankles, numbing our skin as an icy blanket.  Though I began to trot back, whispers of childhood and wonder pulled me toward the sea again, chasing the waves as they slipped back into the deep, then letting them lap once more at my feet.

Tomorrow we’ll bring Waylon to the ocean, too.  By then my words will be gone, my sentiment spread out on the waves somewhere, the sand brushed clean by the salt water.  What freedom there is in this world of wind and water: to be blown or washed away, to begin anew with each gust, each tide rising in and out.

 

Water and Rock: The Acadian Coast

21 Tuesday Aug 2012

Posted by in Nature/Environment, Travel, Writing

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Coastal Maine is more than salt and seaweed.  It is rock, too: rocky break-ways leading out to lighthouses, rocky beaches covered and exposed by changing tides, cliffs of rock raising high above the ocean.  What more can you ask for but this, water and rock–hydrogen, oxygen, minerals–the beginnings and base of life.  This is what pulls me to the coast, these smells and textures, this movement and stillness, this water and rock.

I grew up in Vermont, but still the ocean is part of me, or I am part of the ocean.  If you asked me at six years old what I wished to be more than anything else, I would have told you a mermaid, and my home would be the sea.  But it is more than that.  It’s the sense of wonder that comes from a thing so large, a thing that offers food and salt, that offers life and mystery, but that can so quickly and powerfully take life away.  It is being in the presence of an energy that moves freely and truly without emotion, and learning to feel that energy within myself.

Ocean and rock teach me the same thing: to be present.  It is a lesson that must be practiced, and so Edge and I went climbing yesterday at the Precipice wall in Acadia National Park.  It has been said that you should do one thing everyday that scares you, and to that I will say this: rock climbing does not inherently scare me, but it does bring my vulnerabilities and anxieties to the forefront of my mind.  Some days they hardly appear, and I climb confidently for hours.  Other days I must stop to breathe and remind myself I know how to do this, I can do this, I am good at this, I am safe, I am alive.  Those days I must remember how to move freely and truly without emotion.

When we began yesterday I was confident, but somewhere on the second pitch of a climb doubt crept in, and I stopped.  I could see Edge above me at the belay station, and though a fall held little risk, I yelled “take!” and felt the rope tighten with Edge’s support.  I held on then, and called out to him, “I need to stay here for a minute.”  Breathing, I focused in on the rock, on the crack before me and holds above me.  And then I turned my head out, and there was the ocean.  In and out I breathed, feeling the cliff and staring at the water, until thoughts of doubt receded and I looked up, smiling at Edge, ready to keep climbing.  The third pitch brought us to the top, and we stood there for a while, leaning against the wall as the ocean spread out to the horizon.

View from the top

This is what pulls me to the coast: this stillness of mind and movement of body, this reconnection with the base of life–hydrogen, oxygen, minerals–water and rock.  They teach me to be present every day.

Salt and Seaweed

19 Sunday Aug 2012

Posted by in Nature/Environment

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Maine.  We are finally here

I open my eyes to the ocean.  Sunrise comes in through our window, lighting the yellow walls, and I look out to the white pines and the bay and the rocky shore.  Pebble, one of our dogs, is already bursting with energy, flopping her tail back and forth on the bed and telling us it is time to go outside.  So we go.

Barb, my mother-in-law, and I walk with the four dogs down to the beach where a lobster boat floats next to a buoy in calm water and long clouds stretch across the sky, slowly giving way to the blue above them.  The dogs run back and forth, their snouts skimming above the rocks, their ears on alert and their tails wagging.  I put my nose to the air and breathe in salt and seaweed.

The mosquitoes find us fast, and I’m surprised when I squash three at once on my arm, brush another out of my eyebrow, and feel the bites of a few more on my feet.  Still, I smile.  We head back inside as seagulls are taking their first flights of the day and calling out over the water.  I find Edge in our room, just waking up.

“Hello, vacation-man,” I say, and he laughs.

It’s hard for farmers to take time off during the summer.  It’s harder still for that time to be in mid-August, when the garden is bursting with vegetables and the list of to-dos only seem to grow, but here we are on vacation, and there are no lists waiting to be checked off.  There is only the ocean and family, and it feels so good.