finally....

the last little bit of our trip....

this is a grey whale skull that the folks who owned the place we stayed at pulled out of the bay, stinky thing that it was....then. amazing thing that it is now....

Here is Long Beach....Tofino. Isn't it beautiful? Come visit. Come surf. Come walk. Come covet. We won't mind. Honest.

Eem-er was free for days here....she was so absolutely, fantastically exhausted...and we enjoyed our our long evenings with a really over-the-top-tired dog. We don't get that often.

We don't get these long, wide open, sandy beach walks on our coast....it's not that far away, really.

Amazing, isn't it?

Dunes next to rainforests? From flat sand to dunes to tall trees?

Hard to imagine that the two coasts of the same island are so different....here, in Tofino, I recall Newport, Oregon, with the tall rocks and the flat beaches.. the winter storms, the summer traffic...it was so much like "coming home," often a feeling I don't experience all too often, not even when I am coming home. The sound of the surf rolling in and rolling in....it's like nothing else you have ever experienced....

It's like every comfortable thing you've ever experienced coming together in one thing....mashed potatoes or mac and cheese, your favourite pajamas, your best friend, your favourite toy, favourite song(s), the moments of utmost magic that have happened in your life....the best music, the most privately ecstatic moments....your oldest, softest sweater...your treasured stuffed animal....

and the all the longing of your life....all that you've ever wanted...or desired...or needed...or hoped for.

That is the magic here.

This, the beach, the wide open, where water meets sky, is often a dream of mine...even when I live here... The divine. The face of god....but then again...so is is the high desert...the colour blue of a Colorado sky....the hurricane force of the winds of a south Texas Island Storm.

There is magic everywhere.

We just need to remember to look.

We need to remember to see.

No matter how hard it is to remember sometimes....and believe me, I know...we need to remember just where and what and who we are here...there is magic, there is every chance to catch your breath...and to remember....

and? just in case you have an extra ten minutes to spare...I add this...
, cuz he's there, too. In all that magic... did I happen to mention that I am going to see Leonard Cohen? Gotta love the music...the mastery...of nature, of poetry, of songwriters, of the epic, the lore, the love, the legend, the spectacle, the belief that our words can change the world....at least your world and my world.