Limantour

An unusually high tide washed up this beach a few hours ago, and now the mostly dried sand feels like a warm crust of brownies beneath my feet.

The inter-tidal is covered in crab carapaces and probing sandpipers. The tops of the soft and lethargic waves are capped in rose quartz.

The sun is a golden shield in the sky and an orange dagger in the water.

The same sun that is playing too close to the horizon again, and will soon be pulled under by the flexing currents, left to tumble and toss in the darkness until it is spit back out on some distant shore in the morning time.

The salty musk of the sea smells like my dad, and the little crab boats have just turned on their lights.

The entire continent stretches off my back like a giant horned and channeled shell, and to stand with my feet in the ocean seems an especially noteworthy achievement right now.

Thoreau said that every compass points west, but he had the advantage of being in Concord, Massachusetts, while I have exhausted west, at least as far as walking is concerned.

For me south along the edge of the continent will have to do, until I make a quick punch left through the dunes spangled in salt grass and coast lupine, back towards that mighty eastern parking lot.

January 2008
Limantour Beach, CA