What else could I do?

It took almost three times the amount of time that it took to get there to drive home from Santa Rosa tonight.  I drove the mountain roads pretending like I knew what I was doing.  Finally, driving down in to a valley with a night sky to the left that I could just tell was near the ocean, I pulled in to a Whole Foods.

The Whole Foods alone was enough to know that I was far from home.  I got out my GPS and wound up going the long way, down the creepy all black magicy feeling Bohemian Highway and finally back to the cottage in the woods.  It's funny to me, I live right now 100 yards from one of the sunniest corridors in Sonoma County; the river across the street is a fork off the Russian several miles away, and driving along side that river through the pastures and rolling hills is one of the sunniest delights I've ever seen.  Sonoma Scenic Route 116.  But where I am, 100 yards away, under a tall redwood canopy, I sit in the breathless waterfall of the trees busy drinking up their fog.  It is always cold, and I am getting expert at building fire.

Friday I hiked an hour along the coast.  Yesterday I went to the beach late in the day.  I have seen water explode over rocks in ways that make me want to fall to my knees.  But I have never seen water explode on a shore, merely from the force of its shallow undercurl break, the way I witnessed yesterday.  The blast was so powerful it shook the ground and my breath had trouble going all the way in to my lungs.  The ocean was so fiercely, repeatedly slamming itself that it was churned to a froth thicker than shaving cream.  Here's the thing, driving along the coast highway looking all the way down to the water, the sets were perfect timed tidy rollers.  In the ten minutes it took me to switchback all the way down then walk over the dunes to the sand, that's how quick it changed.  It was awing, I stood a long time motionless.  Probably my jaw was hanging a little down.  That's how much I was in utter trance to the sea.

On my way, later, back up the mountain towards the coast highway there was the white moon, in the blue sky.  Night blue sky, that lovely dusk blue.  Deer were pitched all up and down the crags of rock, having little grassy chews.  Two times different deers looked right at me.  I smelled like salt and my cheeks burnt red from the salt air and late sun.  I walked a long time up the beach both ways, I watched children, I watched lovers, I listened to seals, I watched the ocean, I heard the waves.  I read what Eudora seemed to have prepared just for me to read.  Today I wrote all afternoon in a cafe, tonight I drove to Santa Rosa for a movie and enjoyed getting lost on my way home.

I am satisfied.  It's an odd feeling, to be so subsumed in the experience of fulfillment, of actually doing it.  Gratitude goes unsaid, I am quenched in it.  It spins off from me, it's the light step I have, the contentment in watching, listening, feeling the sun on my arms, the mark of charcoal on my jeans.  It's more like, wow, I did it, what else could I do?  There is wondrous stillness knowing that there will never come a day that I may say I sure wish I had taken the chance and just gone after the artistic life I think I might love.

So, wow, what else could I do?