Joy is a Beach
Tidepools at sunrise.
We escaped to the Washington coast this weekend in what is becoming an annual event with friends. We always approach the weekend wondering if we have it in us to do the 5-hour trek out to the peninsula, and then remember just how refreshing the time is. This year was no different. Once we are on the ferry the scent of vacation is in the air and the weariness lifts with each turn about the deck.
The obligatory ferry picture.
We got the tent up just as the rain started, and we fell asleep to its tapping sound on the strategically strung tarp, the air still warm enough for comfort inside our grown-up fort in the woods.
Northern Washington has stunning beaches, even if the person in charge of the naming fell down on the job. We have First Beach, Second Beach, Third Beach and then Beach Four, Beach Three, Beach Two, and Beach One, so you’ll have to forgive me if I can’t remember exactly which beach each picture came from—don’t even get me started on the road names in Sequim. (Kitchen-Dick Road, I’m looking at you.)
Beach Four? Second Beach? I dunno!
We walked down the cliff side to several beaches, some paths paved, some stairs booby-trapped, some tread mud-slick. We shared hiking poles and walked at the pace of the slowest person, so thankful someone was willing to walk at a sustainable gait. Each of our packs carried slightly different gear, but between the six of us we were prepared for any eventuality—Eric could even boil the water for the random tea bags in my pocket. We watched the 20-something beach goers bound through driftwood and scale the sea stacks, wincing at the thought of what would happen to our ankles and posteriors these days if we tried that agility. Not that it stopped us, we still climbed the logs and stood on the rocks, it’s just that our grace factor was sadly lacking—we pay homage to our limits.
We still climbed.
It was probably due to the recognition of our less than spring chicken bodies that Eric quipped, “People think the beach is all romantic, when actually it is a graveyard for the dying.” Thanks, honey. And then I started looking around. The very things that create the beauty here hold a solid place in the famed “circle of life.” The driftwood—dead trees; standing rocks—eroded mountains. Sand—stone beat to a pulp. Seashells—dinner eaten. Tidepools—dinner served.
Dinner Served.
On our way to take the necessary picture next to the enormous roots of a storm-tossed tree, we found a beached log covered in dragon scales attached by gummy worms. Technically, they were gooseneck barnacles, each creature-filled shell lip-lined in yellow. The floating city had washed ashore in the previous tide and looked out of reach of the next. But the log was alive with feather-like creatures reaching out to find food, and we were intrigued with the textures, the movement, the colors. My friend and I even wanted to drag it back into the waves, because surely these animals didn’t belong here. (Turns out, we would have been felons for “moving sea animals” on the beach.) These animals purposely attach to moving objects and go with the tide—could I trust Mother Nature to either bring them back into the sea, or feed the flock of seagulls waiting their turn. (Not really.) Graveyard or life, depending on who’s telling the story.
Imagine these beauties floating in the water.
We found the remains of a beached whale, where someone had created a memorial of sea-smoothed wood to encircle the carcass. If you stood upwind its beauty pulled you in to observe the life this majestic animal once carried, and the life it was now feeding. (Being downwind was not a viable option.) Had it died in the ocean it would have been a part of the great tradition of a whalefall, where a whole ecosystem is created from the body now sitting on the ocean’s floor—its last gift is bringing life to many ocean creatures, every part of the enormous body food or shelter for another living being.
Do you see all the barnacle carried by this giant of the sea?
It’s hard to be aging, to see the inevitability of time in the slowing of my body and my less than grace-filled movements navigating the ever-changing landscape of the sea. I enjoy laughing at myself, making stories for the lines I now have, the sag that’s creeping in. I hope that I can become that wise old woman of storied fame as I embody my place in life’s circle. I hope I can let things die that need to die, instead of holding onto what I think should be.
A little sea art—can you see the “wise, old woman of storied fame” in her?
I want to think of the beach as a romantic place, and I want romance to include the gift of dying to let other things grow. I want to feel the freedom to embrace the unknown so new beauty can emerge.
Metaphorically speaking. I’ll work on literally, later.
#joyasresistance