I Love "The Sound"

After my NaNoWriMo plotting workshop today, I detoured to the beach to eat my lunch and soak up the view. It was a glorious day. Blue sky, golden and russet trees, and Puget Sound was dark bluish-green with whitecaps. While I was there, a cargo ship crossed way, way out in the channel, moving from Tacoma to Seattle and eventually to the Pacific. The wind and the distance gave the ship a cloak of utter silence; this, too, was beautiful. At the tide line, I found a tiny clam shell, perfect and clean.

The tide was way in, leaving a narrow strip of sand. When the tide's in, it doesn't only make the beach smaller. The water level is noticeably higher, so that it was almost at eye level from where I sat. The difference in perspective from high tide to low is subtle but powerful. It really does make a difference if you're looking down on the water or straight across it. Somehow, high tide invites me to share the water experience. At low tide, looking down at a broad expanse of beach and water, the Sound is emotionally distant. High tide comes to play, to lap at the bulkhead, and taunts you to take out a canoe and paddle over to the overhanging trees against the shore.

Tidal Waves (but not tsunamis)

When I was growing up, I spent a lot of time on Puget Sound. One of the coolest things about our little bay was that it changed, a lot, four times a day. At low tides, there might be 200 feet of beach to walk on, from rocks and barnacles out to mud flats. As the tide came up, the water covered everything and made a more uniform appearance. When the tide got really high, you might be caught dancing between salt water and bushes on the high bank. If you were lucky enough to be able to get into a boat, that was prime cruising time, right up at the edge of the land. But if you were afoot, you'd better count on getting your shoes wet.

I haven't posted anything here for a few weeks because an unusually long-lasting high tide. Life has been full, full, full, and all I could do was dance along a narrow shoreline. I'm thankful that none of the waves have been big enough to knock me down, but the force of the tide has been unrelenting and has made me feel pinned in place.

Although this blog isn't all about me, per se, it is about my walk. I have kept walking, kept reading, kept praying, but there hasn't been much that could be openly shared. I think the tide has reached its high point and may be starting to turn. When there's a little more beach to walk on, I'll be able to write more freely. I do think I'll be able to get working on some fiction soon, finally. Thanks for reading.