Comment of the day
Out of context: Reply #10
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- sofas0
"I once went hiking with a girl at Point Reyes. We parked on the side of a road near a hostel and followed a trail some miles to the shore. We saw a gartersnake, imbricate scales with three yellow stripes running down its body, and we stepped to the side of the trail and waited for it to pass.
We walked on. The trail curved around a hill and we saw the ocean, gray beneath serried clouds, and we saw brown buildings ahead and there were camping sites and there was an old wooden building with a blue restroom sign. While she used the restroom I sat at a wooden table with a father and we watched his two sons try and fail and try again to set up their white dome tent. The father was laughing and giving them advice as they tried to bend the poles and then he got up to help.
She came out of the bathroom and we left the father to his sons and the sons to their father. We went down the trail toward the ocean and stopped at a eucalyptus tree with a rope swing. Beyond that was a cliff overlooking the pacific. She stood on the edge of the cliff and I thought she might fall and I came up beside her and the wind blew against us and there were red and blue specks of people moving on the beach below and there was something shaped like a dog, probably a dog, moving beside them.
We took a path down to the beach and we ran forth like children, stepping lightly in the surf, the ocean pulsing beneath our feet. We walked along the beach, we smiled at the people passing by. That cold day and the sky was raw and gray. Old ocean smell, welter of memory, and now years later when I close my eyes I cannot see her face. She is all a blur. I remember walking with my arm around her and a dungeness crab scuttling by. What stays and what does not. I remember what my father once said to me, always keep an eye on the ocean. My vision split between the pacific and her and if I do not feel love I do feel peace."