Salt

Every 18.6 years the tide cycle in the Pacific Northwest repeats itself. So perfectly predictable, it is a pattern created by solar and lunar orbits that brings about the exact same measurements - to the centimetre - on each place on the coast. We commonly think about tides in relation to a daily and monthly schedule, the higher high and lower low waters, the springs and the neaps, so it is always surprising to people when you tell them about this larger, multi-year pattern of highs and lows. Nature has a precision we cannot hope to replicate, and yet we often characterize her as chaotic, cacophonous, unbridled. 'Wild' is a word often used to describe people and things that are without discipline, impulsive or wanton.

I returned home this week from a 9 day trip on the ocean, skin and soul scrubbed by saltwater and the finest sand. I am tired, back in the routine of a regular job after being on ocean time, having returned to the lee for a short break from the windy side of this island. My clock has been reset by a feral kind of symmetry; I have made this way of living a bit of a habit, moving back and forth between the urban and the wild, always working on evening out the pendulum swing.  Always seeking just the right mix of movement and staying put. It is as good as it gets right now - I have called it perfect, this balance of freedom and stability that I have built. My nomadic soul has always wanted to meet it's more settled twin, and this is possible now. Perhaps it is already happening and they are twining fingers and staring into each others eyes just beyond my line of sight.

The wild west scours me clean and works it's magic on my nervous system. I sleep well, bathed in a soundscape of dumping surf - and the slow inhale as the sea sucks itself back for another assault on the shore. Since the first time I travelled up this particular bit of coastline by kayak I have noticed that the ocean is a breathing thing. It reminds me to breathe more fully and I make a point not to forget this when I am back in the city.

It seemed like there is often no pause between these two realities, but sometimes I am aware that this life is made of nothing but pauses. The only adversity I feel is what I drum up from the inside, looking to find discord where there is none, creating a sense of rushing when I have already arrived, a sense of lack when I am steeped in riches; I am just like a human being in that way. Always on the lookout for imperfection, or trouble, or something that is somehow not enough. But these days the blows from within seem to glance off me like water rolling off freshly preened duck feathers. There is a smoothness to things, like polished beach stones.