Road Trips and the Mind

“Carried along on the hum of the motor and the countryside passing by, the journey itself flows through you and clears your head.  Ideas one held on to without any reason depart; others, however, are readjusted and settle like pebbles at the bottom of a stream.  There’s no need to interfere; the road does that work for you.  One would like to think that it stretches out like this, dispensing its good offices, not just to the ends of India but even further, until death.”
— Nicolas Bouvier, The Way of the World

Nearing sunset on Hwy 101, Olympic Peninsula

This has been a vacation-less summer for me, and I’ve been craving a getaway.  This weekend my husband and I took a daytrip to a few ocean beaches on the Olympic Peninsula.  We drove from sun up to sun down — a long day — but relaxing in the way Bouvier describes in the quote above, the miles stringing along with free-flowing thoughts and impressions.  The day was a tonic.

We explored two beaches I had never been to before near La Push on the Pacific coast and Rialto Beach where I had taken my niece last year.  Our summer weather has been hot and sunny lately, but interestingly, a fog bank had settled right where the water met the land, and it stayed cool and gray on the beaches.  We could barely make out the silhouettes of sea stacks off shore.  Still, being by the ocean was restorative — the fresh smells of salt and wet sand, the rhythmic crashing of the waves.

First Beach in LaPush with fog-enshrouded sea stacks

Jetty at First Beach

Through the “eye” of driftwood

Watching the waves

Mile+ path down to Second Beach included stairs down the bluff

Fog at Second Beach

Surf fishing at Second Beach

Second Beach

Sand sculpture

Pebbly shore at Rialto Beach

The sun never made it out

Stacked beach rocks, Rialto Beach

Rialto Beach

Seagull

Seagull

 

 

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Gentle Fisherman

Fishing on Lake Union with Seattle skyline

My husband's hands with fishing reel

I think the following poem captures the spirit of my husband whenever I see him with a fishing pole in his hands.

Fisherfolk
by Robert Service

I like to look at fishermen
And often times I wish
One would be lucky now and then
And catch a little fish.
I watch them statuesquely stand,
And at the water look;
But if they pull their float to land
It’s just to bait a hook.

I ponder the psychology
That roots them in their place;
And wonder at the calm I see
In every angler’s face.
There is such patience in their eyes,
Beside the river’s brink;
And waiting for a bite or rise
I do not think they think.

Or else they are just gentle men,
Who love–they know not why,
 Green grace of trees or water when
It wimples to the sky . . .
Sweet simple souls! As vain I watch
My heart to you is kind:
Most precious prize of all you catch,
–Just Peace of Mind.