The Pacific Coast of Washington State is wildly whipped and windblown, wrapped in thick grey sky and warped by silver waves. The power and movement of that place fill you up and set you free to imagine better – a connection to others who also dare to embrace the energy of the ocean. And, in only moments, the motion stops, and the calm that settles in reassures the deep dreams you’ve once again believed in.
“I remembered Seattle as a town sitting on hills beside a matchless harborage – a little city of space and trees and gardens, its houses matched to such a background. It is no longer so. … This Seattle was not something changed that I once knew. It was a new thing. Set down there not knowing it was Seattle, I could not have told where I was. Everywhere frantic growth, a carcinomatous growth. Bulldozers rolled up the green forests and heaped the resulting trash for burning. The torn white lumber from concrete forms was piled beside gray walls. I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.”
Facing every direction
I hold up outstretched hands
Against endless dark lines of trees
Silhouetted by the reflection
Of young spring sunlight
On winter’s last icy snow
The trail packed and pock-marked
Owls begin to call
With voices like haunted women
And my feet find little purchase
As I run
Along the slick path
Alone
