In Place

Thrasher Cove.

Yesterday I paddled up this familiar coast. This time on the outside, bobbing between the shoreline rocks, wind and waves. I have been here before, but I travelled by foot, deep in the woods, climbing and descending the dark forested trails of memory. All to arrive at this same beach. This is where it began. Despite the fact that the mode of travel has changed, it is the same, and I can feel that we still reside here, ingrained in the sandstone cliffs at our backs, cradled in the bed of love and reverence that started us on the path. I am still in awe now of the soft beach, the green smells on ocean breeze, the life that pads to and fro on the sand between forest and water, seeking morsels to feast on. This intertidal place on the edge of a temperate spruce and cedar cathedral.

It is here that I remember. It is less than three years, it is more than twenty-five. A place where teeth were cut on wilderness departures.

I think about the other end of this Trail. So close by water, but days on foot. Where we sat side by each on the log, etched forever on the emulsion sheet of my soul. Whales cruising by, you awash in a  childhood memory of loss, the tannin-stained river flooding and gurgling beside us, the dark skies of late fall starting to build on this horizon. Perhaps this was the point to being here; when we return to things that seem lost but are never truly so. These places are here to remind us that they are filled with spirits, words and looks that defied capture, eons of the comings and goings of creatures human and non. Melded together in an energetic soup that contains all things worth keeping. All things worthwhile. We can live in the present and move forward but when we return to places that  have contained us, and contain us still sacredness alights upon the breath of the sea, it's moving shores teeming with light.