I want to vanish out into the chaparral every day, and have the energy to climb to the top of the hill and scream out to the ocean for her to reach and drag me back to her bosom.
When I was a child I spent several weeks over a few summers at marine biology camp on Catalina island. The days were variously spent clambering over dusty hills, meeting wild life and plants, learning to eat cactus fruit. Or in the tumultuous surf and waves or beneath them. Petting little sharks and feeding them bits of squid as a reward for letting us learn about them up close. Learning that the biomes under the waves are as varied and wonderful as their terrestrial counterparts.
It was school after a fashion and yet far more educational than any classroom could pray with the grace of a saint to be. Like any school day, there was recess.
I remember vividly the gray clouds one day, and the surf being more powerful than usual and how we were discouraged from going out in the water. Several of us went anyway of course. We were precocious little shits, and we were body surfing. Catalina isn’t as dangerous as the Sonoma coast for this, but I know what it feels like to be caught in the undertow because of that afternoon. The back draw of the wave and getting pounded down into the sand over and over by the tidal cycle. I never felt quite so alive as in the moment when I finally was allowed to bob back up like a cork and breathe. I must have had five pounds of sand in each pocket after that.
I could have drowned, I’m ever so aware, but I didn’t feel death in that moment, not even the threat of her. I was laughing as I lay on my back in the pebbly sand of Toyon Bay.
That is how I want to spend every remaining day. Laughing at being alive and cheating my way from death again and again, making her chase me, and then laughing when her arms finally wrap around me and she whispers caught you, as that kiss of hers lands on my lips.
When I was a child I spent several weeks over a few summers at marine biology camp on Catalina island. The days were variously spent clambering over dusty hills, meeting wild life and plants, learning to eat cactus fruit. Or in the tumultuous surf and waves or beneath them. Petting little sharks and feeding them bits of squid as a reward for letting us learn about them up close. Learning that the biomes under the waves are as varied and wonderful as their terrestrial counterparts.
It was school after a fashion and yet far more educational than any classroom could pray with the grace of a saint to be. Like any school day, there was recess.
I remember vividly the gray clouds one day, and the surf being more powerful than usual and how we were discouraged from going out in the water. Several of us went anyway of course. We were precocious little shits, and we were body surfing. Catalina isn’t as dangerous as the Sonoma coast for this, but I know what it feels like to be caught in the undertow because of that afternoon. The back draw of the wave and getting pounded down into the sand over and over by the tidal cycle. I never felt quite so alive as in the moment when I finally was allowed to bob back up like a cork and breathe. I must have had five pounds of sand in each pocket after that.
I could have drowned, I’m ever so aware, but I didn’t feel death in that moment, not even the threat of her. I was laughing as I lay on my back in the pebbly sand of Toyon Bay.
That is how I want to spend every remaining day. Laughing at being alive and cheating my way from death again and again, making her chase me, and then laughing when her arms finally wrap around me and she whispers caught you, as that kiss of hers lands on my lips.