We live on an island–Orcas Island, in the San Juans, in farthest western Washington State–and there are lots of lovely woods here. I’ve written before about how much I love walking in the woods, how I walk nearly every day up the country road outside our house, to pick up the mail, or just to observe the wildlife and get some fresh air into my lungs.
But the cool thing about islands? They’re, you know, surrounded by water.
That means there are a lot of beaches here.
Now, I was born in Southern California, so even though I didn’t live there very long, I started out life with a definite idea of what “beach” means. A beach is a big hot flat sandy expanse with a warm ocean next to it. A beach is covered with people in bathing suits, stretched out on colorful towels, tanned skin smeared with oily lotion. A beach is a huge playground.
Our beaches here? Not like that.
To be fair, I already understood that my Southern California beach-idea was not exactly universal. I learned that long ago when my family moved north, first to San Francisco, and then to Mendocino County. I’ve kind of been moving ever northward ever since, come to think of it.
I hope I’m done moving–north or otherwise.
Beaches here are rocky, and sometimes steep, and covered with shells, and driftwood, and seaweed, and streams running down from the hills, and little crabs that duck back into their holes when you walk closer to them, and clams that spit water up into the air as they retreat into the sand.
(Because yes, sometimes there’s even sand.)
The shoreline teems with life. Tiny fish swim in the shallowest shallows; more crabs meander a little further out; there are so many birds. The other day, I saw these adorable bufflehead ducks, bobbing and diving, though they were shy about being photographed.
The only reason I don’t walk on the beach more often is that it involves a drive to get there. Sure, it’s a five-minute drive, but so often, I feel as if I can only spare the thirty or so minutes that my mailbox walk takes; I just CANNOT squeeze any more “time off” into my day.
But is that really true? Am I really THAT busy? Why did I move to a lovely island, anyway, if not to experience all its wonders, in my daily life?
Well, it is true that I have a lot to do. I’m a freelance copy editor/proofreader with a full stable of clients; I’m a writer, with a number of books under contract and a bunch more books coming out through Book View Cafe; I’m editing or co-editing a few anthologies; and that’s just the “work” part of things. I also cook (sometimes) and clean house (when I get around to it) and do laundry (ditto) and garden (in the spring and summer) and hang out with my husband (when he’s not working) and take care of my mother-in-law (at least until we can all get vaccinated and it makes sense for her to return to her Senior Independent Living Community on the mainland).
I like doing all those things. It’s why they’re all there on that list.
But beach walking: I like that too.
My mother-in-law turns 88 next month. She’s in marvelous shape and is excellent company; she was enjoying living in her Senior Community and had already made tons of friends in the short time she’d been there, when COVID hit.
As a family, we all decided that she’d be better off here with us, out on our island. It’s pretty safe here. According to an article in our local newspaper this week, “San Juan County has the third lowest overall COVID rate per 100 thousand people of anywhere in the United States. Not only that, but we’re ahead by quite a bit. In addition, San Juan County is the second largest County in America to have not recorded a single COVID fatality.”
(The gist of the article was that the reason for this impressive showing is our careful adherence to safety guidelines, in addition to our remote and rural nature; it was an exhortation not to let our guard down now, so close the “finish line” of greater vaccine rollout.)
My husband and I realized recently that we’re taking too good of care of my MIL; specifically, she was in danger of forgetting how to drive, if we didn’t make her take us out for outings in her car periodically.
Hence, Sunday’s walk on the beach.
The drive was healthy for her car, too–cars like to be driven, as many of us learned in the early days of the pandemic–and we all enjoyed the walk.
We saw a few other small groups of people on the beach, all safely distanced and most wearing masks, which we certainly appreciated. Then another group arrived with kayaks, and put out onto the smooth water.
(Ooh, kayaks. I love kayaking. Buying our own kayaks is On The List.)
Another argument for walking more is that walking is good for writing. When I’m walking alone, my mind often lets go of the busy daily obsessive anxiety-whirl and begins to find its way back to “story”–whatever story I’m working on. The characters wake up again in my brain; I see things that I couldn’t see when I was squinting at the computer screen.
When I walk with my husband, we talk–about his writing, about my writing–and help each other see pieces of the puzzle we’ve been struggling with.
This is not a new insight of mine…just one I need to continue to remind myself of.
There is probably more time to walk than I let myself believe.
