Hedgebrook, Day Fourteen

Yesterday, I went on a walk to Deer Lagoon and then to the sweet curve of Useless Bay. Useless Bay got its name because it was useless, basically -- impossible to use as a port because it's too shallow. At low tide, I could better understand that because the waterline was so far away, broken here and there by sandbars that I was able to step on. So beautiful. See for yourself.

Here are some shots of Deer Lagoon on the way home. The weather has turned to pleasantly cool and seems more like the Pacific Northwest that I had imagined. The bugs, nearly terrifying the other times I'd walked over the causeway, were manageable, and I stopped and watched a flock of geese preening at waterside.

There's your dose of beautiful for the day.

Now, I'm off to write. Life is hard, right?

Hedgebrook, Day Eight

Full moon over Deer Lagoon, Whidbey Island

the devourers of books, who exhaust themselves 
only by reading, should desist as soon as they find 
their comprehension more than commonly slow, 
their sight moaty and dimmish, or their eyes hot and watery.

Samuel Tissot, from his Essay on Diseases Incident to 
Literary and Sedentary Persons (1769)


Don't think I haven't felt chagrin, even guilt. I woke this morning and peered over the railing next to my bed, a loft that you reach by ladder. The sun slanted through the small, paned window over the kitchen sink and fell on the floor in a rainbow. Each part of the Hedgebrook cottage is perfect, perfect and sufficient to each moment. My mind might wander to the future, the end of my stay, finger the sore of re-entry, but the solitude here, the birds, the wildflowers gathered from the garden and placed in a jar on the windowsill, one plate, one bowl, one fork, one spoon, one cup to hold coffee conspire to keep me here, now.

Hedgebrook, Day Three

Deer Lagoon, Whidbey Island

I worked all morning today, have reached California, 1998. I walked to Useless Bay and then back along a dyke through Deer Lagoon. I pretended not to notice when what might have been tens of thousands of miniature dragonflies swarmed me, the whir of their wings so constant in my ear that I finally waved my hands in front of my face as I walked. I saw rabbits, a deer, several herons and transparent crabs that skittered over my feet and disappeared into the sand. I trudged home in the hot sun, sticky. I collapsed on my bed and shared a glass of water with a moth who fluttered up and out as I tipped the water back.