Three o'clock comes early for one who hasn't slept more than four hours a night for months but the pull of the archipelago and the knowledge that today and tomorrow are mine, what's left of what Mary Oliver calls "your one precious life", was far too pressing to ignore. So I boarded a mostly empty ferry to Orcas Island to walk it's 500 million year old bedrock along a ridge littered with twisted Oregon White Oak and gothic shadows of madrone. I miss these winter mornings as passenger out to the islands; darkness rising from darkness as one pulls into a sleepy island. All was calm and clear the sea being as fickle as affection sought from the jaded.
Starting just above sea level next to a creek running with an intensity borrowed from yesterdays rain the sound of running water more a guide than the pale light. Flashes of Dark Eyed Juncos retreating into the manzinita, retreating avian waves, evading us bipedal interlopers. My steps were hurried I wanted to catch the dawn. Once in the deserts of Utah I twisted long lengths of pounded Yucca fiber into thread, took a Juniper branch as offering making a dream catcher. I wanted to capture the dawn in such a manner. Catching the soft illumination on my body. Unlike other wishes made and achieved this was truly sublime; light caught in the firs on the opposing ridge sending shadows across the lowlands inverted transient strata overlaying the organic and anthropogenic alike. A delicate rain storm suspended over a narrow strait to the west and I the observer stood in awe a witness to things diminutive and eternal.
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