Point Reyes

We drove two hours up the coast to Point Reyes National Seashore today. After a picnic and many deer-sightings, O. and I began a six mile hike to the coast, where blue sky meets blue water, and the cliffs of the coastline weave in and out.

Along the way, we discussed the different kinds of questions we ask people around us. The discussion centered around how questions ("How can I help this person?" "How will this person change?") as opposed to why questions ("Why did this person react so strongly? What motivates this desire?"). How questions look forward to the future, while why questions look back to the past for answers, we noted.

Every so often, the discussion was interrupted by a tiny yellow bird (a wren?) flitting through moss-festooned branches, or by a hazardous patch of mud in the trail. Once, we met a red-bellied salamander hurrying along the trail.

By the time we reached the beach, my feet were sore. I liberated them and walked the next two and half miles on the sand in bare feet, occasionally numbed by frigid Pacific waves. I think I lost several layers of calluses.

Sun, sky, sea, soul-searching conversation: a blessed day.

[Baking and politicking]

While the bread dough inflates,
we sit on the couch, and you say
The writing is on the wall.

What do you see written? I ask.
You answer: Collapse.

We speak of wires tapped,
homes invaded, citizens dragged
off to concentration camps,

The smell of yeast drifts
to our nostrils. We lick our lips--
lips from which

words of war, rebellion, disaster
fell--

How swiftly present scent
replaces future-sense,
so that all that can matter
is bread, butter, laughter.

Hiking with K.

Turning a corner, we passed the trees whose branches had constrained the horizon. The vista unfolded before us. Hill layered beyond hill. Trees clothed each ridge in green, but the distance veiled the mountains in blue. The closest hillside glowed green, but the farthest lines of the earth were deep blue like the night sky.

The hills rippled below us, an ocean of rock and trees, limestone and pine and oak. I wanted to sail across that sea, to rise on the wings of the dawn, to drift on the air currents like the hawk that floated below us. We never saw it flap its wings. It only drifted in gentle circles, spiraling like our conversation, which rose and fell from the present to the distant past and into the near future, glided peacefully from the mundane to the profound.