Taken on a winter day, the tide was out far enough this morning that I could walk well out on the sand beyond that triangular seasick I think of as a seal sticking his head up out of the sand.
Clouds like cobblestones drift over the eastern horizon. Light seams their edges. Birds join the morning music.
We might miss a half dozen days out of the year, but my husband and I try to walk each morning. We go out as soon as there is light or whenever I can get my behind in gear. Two cups of coffee, checking my email, and this time of year, it is light at 4 but even so we are usually not before 6am.
We are rarely first.
This morning was perfect, sun already over the coast range, reaching across the sand. Low clouds sliding down along the cape to the south and mist rising up off the ocean. A roll of fog out on the horizon, blue sky overhead. We walked south, Gary with the trash bag, mw filling my pockets with little stone, as is our habit. Sometimes we walked together, more often we wove away and back across sand and the rock edging the beach, looking for trash, agates, and glass. The tide was sweeping in, but there was a broad expanse of sand and last night’s high tide had left a stretch of dry sand along most of our shore.
We headed north, waving at locals as we went. I thought about going past the northern point, the first long distance of the year. Drift logs pile up in that little cove north, the way they once did all along Arch Cape beach. My mother used to play a game with her sister where they pretended the sand was poison and they walked drift logs all the way south to the big creek. I might have played that same game in my own childhood, but now locals cut up the logs and tourists place them whole across beach fires and walk off.
A group of campers were just waking up on the sand just south of the falls at Hug Point State Park. It can be a risky place to camp. When the tide comes in high in the dark, it strikes the cliff face and the only escape is pretty much straight up.
By the time I got to Hug Point, a hundred-year-old roadway carved into the rock, waves were already lapping around at the base of the rock. I went up anyway. This was part of my favorite run. No wind. No chance of drizzle. A bright blue, misty day cool enough that I would not be overheated. I ran this path for twenty years. This morning, I would have run all the way to Arcadia, if I had been running and not walking.
It was a good and healthy habit, my running days. Giving it up was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Ask anyone. Ask anyone who used to smoke. Kicking a habit is hard.
I never smoked, and experimented with drugs only briefly. When I was caring for my mother I drank too much, too much for me. Three glasses of wine and I am wasted, and I did that once or twice a week during those five terrible years. I gained weight, but kept running, which certainly shortened my running days. One bad habit destroying a good one.
I am trying to find better habits of eating and drinking, walking and work. I track everything and already, after almost four weeks of keeping track, I am doing better—drowning the bad habits with the good one.
It seems to me that there is too much talk these days about addiction and lifestyle. I was not addicted to running and I was not addicted to eating too much or drinking or writing. These were habits. That is not meant to minimize their power; I mean to acknowledge the power of habit.
When I stopped running I thrashed around, seeking some way to move. I swam when my boys were little, but chlorine and I are not friends and the pool is my only option. I tried bellydance for a while, but now I am a walker, which seems to suit me best.
We were out for two hours this morning, four mile as the crows flies, longer as a real crow might fly and as I walked up and down, up and down, my eyes examining thousands of square feet of rocky shore and sand.
We brought home a sheet of polystyrene foam the size of a lounge chair, a bag of trash, a pocketful of agates, two limpets, and ten sand-washed bits of glass.
Then I went out into the yard and picked the first salal berries from our hedge to make muffins. That is a habit too. At the peak of season, I could make muffins most very day from the berries in our yard. I will save the pickings from three or four days and make jam next month.
I have only worked on my loom for a short time this morning. A bit over four inches are done so far today, and I want twenty.
Some will call this a lifestyle. It’s just life.
This morning we went out for our beach walk on last night’s high tide line where we expected to find trash. We did and brought it home, and I found three pieces of glass, some shells and frozen jellyfish. When I was a girl, jellyfish were rare. I might see one orange jelly six or eight inches across in a half mile walk. These days we see dozens or hundreds, both blue and orange and ranging from an inch up to two feet across.
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 