Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Portals



I took 24 hours and left with Carl on Sunday morning for Ventura and a boat that took us to Santa Rosa Island, one of the remote, uninhabited Channel Islands. We spent the morning looking at whales and dolphins and the wide-open Pacific, the water choppy and sky overhead gray and moody. It took over two hours to get to the island, but once we were there, the skies opened up blue and we wandered around the fields and explored the deserted buildings of the ranch that had once displaced the native Americans who made the island their home. It was very beautiful.
















No one lives on the island anymore, but some people brave its isolation and camp, and there are volunteers who stay to lead tours. Carl and I avoided the few people who had gotten off the boat and made our way alone down to a beach that might as well have been in some tropical paradise, such was its wildness and solitude.







I lay in the sand and read and dozed and we ate a bit of the food that we'd brought -- turkey, crackers, cheese, grapes and plums.

I tried to let everything go, everything.





to be grateful for love and companionship
for whales
for the ocean
for the souls that were banished from this place
for the sand and the breeze that bends
the poppies
for the wide world that still holds us up

the deep world


12 comments:

  1. Good being. Beautiful photos, so spare and clean and beautiful.

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  2. You and Carl are dear to me. Your double portrait at the end of the post is a treasure. That remote uninhabited landscape near the ocean embodies a truth and a beauty that has sustained so many of us throughout our lives. Your post speaks in a deep healing way in these baffling times. Thank you.

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  3. This post just soothed my soul. What a gift that island is to those of you who live near it. The pictures are gorgeous, all of them, and they truly give me a sense of how it must have felt to be there. The pictures of you and Carl are my favorite.

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  4. beautiful, beautiful photos! The splendid desolation with the wind blowing and the surf pounding, and you two sweethearts beaming from page. You probably slept well after such a journey. Always good to get away. I'm happy to see that you did.

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  5. Being outside in the fresh air and sunshine is good medicine. I'm having a hard time readjusting to being back inside all day while I work. Glad you were able to get away.

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  6. I had friends who camped on one of those islands for a weekend. They renamed it mouse island. At night, their tent was invaded by hundreds of mice, the first night was a surprise invasion and they got not sleep. The second night was a battle and they got no sleep. But beautiful in the day.

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  7. You are so Radiant in the last image, clearly the Peace, Beauty and Solitude of this abandoned Island were balm to the Soul and a welcome respite!

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  8. Beautiful photos. Even more so the poem and the last two.

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  9. I saw some of these pics on insta, and I paused to be so impressed by the fact that you and Carl go on actual adventures in the natural world. It is a sublime thing, a true sharing of souls, to experience such as this together.

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  10. What a beautiful place, and so wild-looking. I love that there are still places with very few (if any) people. It's a rare feeling these days! The erosion and the bent trees really illustrate what a harsh environment it must be out there.

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