Mark is standing on an outcropping of rock. Little islands, is what I like to call them. He aims his lens at a group of seals that are playing in the shallows among rocks isolated from us because of the water between. His camera rests on three legs, and he, hunched into the lens, mesmerized by the bird and surf and rock and water dogs that know how to play with the sea....The seals never frantically fight the tide, as we do, to clamber to solid ground. They know the wisdom of waiting, of cycles, of times when it is just right, of times when there is nothing at all. They drift in the tides, but the sea never takes them far, out to its open reaches. They are continually pulled in and out, rubber-banding between the outcrops. The sea knows they are playful and plays with them.

The spray, the mist rising from the sea - the sun that cuts through them and leaves the outlying rocks and fjords a silhouette. Here, I live in god's paradise, our goddess's garden, her favorite vacation.

I turn once and Mark has disappeared. The man that was beside him, looking through binoculars is now approaching me, the seabirds fly as one, pounding the rock I sit upon. The tide is moving in, shouting its presence with its spray and slippery wake.

The sandpipers are of one mind. They think collectively. A wave approaches, their wings form triangles, they are solid, forever a group. They run in large herds, picking at the sand.

cape perpetua, oregon
26.12.99

© 1990 - 2003 Katharina Woodworth