I’m sitting in an old wooden cabin near the coast. It’s hot here in the day; cold at night.
Nearby the coastal range flattens out into a stunning array of forests, estuaries, sand dunes and miles upon miles of scarcely populated beaches.
It’s one piece of paradise.
While the others are out on and in the water — kayaking, swimming, hiking — the dog and I are back here, finding the shade, napping, dreaming.
Well, she’s doing the dreaming, while I stare at an empty screen.
This is reminiscent of a former time when communication was less immediate and therefore more deliberate. We have no cell service here, which makes it feel more remote than it actually is.
No calls, no texts, no pings to break my concentration.
So why does that screen stay so empty — have I nothing to say? No, the opposite is true. I have too much to say about the state of our world, its wars and politics and economic disparities and environmental degradations. And much more.
But today may not be the day for that. As I sip ice water and watch the dog dream, my eye catches movements from a grey squirrel, a white butterfly, a hovering hummingbird. I think of a novel I started years back.
It’s about a man who ventures off on a boat at sunset, a world’s worth of worry on his mind, but nowhere particular to go.
He imagines big adventures, big loves, important discoveries, new worlds. In reality, he has none of those things. When it’s time to drop anchor for the night, however, just before dozing off, he stiffens for a moment and contemplates again what is beyond the realm of possibility, before finding all of those things in his dreams.
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