At the western edge of the continent, the edge of normal. A precarious Sitka spruce clings from wave-crashed rock. The spruce is small, but perhaps not young. Needled fingers implore the sepia sunset. One more day. Just one more day above this crescent moon beach of crushed shells, of bull kelp no longer holding fast, of frayed and wooly drift logs ravaged by beach stones. The rocks are smooth, gentling into the curl of my hand.
Tomorrow the highway going north will be closed. On the stretch where it loops like a black snake around basalt headlands, a piece of pavement slides toward the gaping ocean. Again. As if the road knows by rite of gravity and flush of late winter rain where it belongs. More rebar, more asphalt, more human energy devoted to hanging on. Maybe for just one more day.
Eighty or so sanderlings and I run the beach, following parallel lines of cloud, sand, surf. Our similarities end here. Their short black legs churn in unison, a choreographed flock of baseball-size bodies dancing with incoming waves. I am solitary, legs long and loping and pale. One bird dives exuberantly into the surf, slender black beak churning the thin glisten of saltwater. Ten others follow her. Jogging diagonally to incoming waves, I keep my white running shoes dry. I love sanderlings. They exploit this narrow space separating the safety of our landed lives and certain death in a cold ocean.
Circling of predators. Bald eagle hovers osprey-like above the surf. Waiting. Waiting. Diving, talons spread, emerging from frothy water, feet wet and empty. Fisherman stands waist deep in waves, casting baited hooks. His bag is empty. Dark driftwood head of a sea lion bobs twenty yards offshore. Is her stomach also empty? A cluster of food fish has likely drawn them together. All of the eaters and eaten are fervent and unrelinquishing. Ebb. Flow.
High tide line is littered with moon jellies. Some are ten translucent inches in diameter, all long since dead. Did they die at sea and wash up post mortem? Or did they cluster in this same parcel of ocean where fisher and sea lion and bald eagle now search for sustenance, only to be cast ashore by regurgitating storm waves? An infinite gulf of dry sand separates their ignominious decomposition from churning waves on which they so gracefully drifted. I cannot step on them.
This precarious edge. Of a continent battered by ocean, sliding submissively toward the center of the earth. Maybe snagging on the way down, the big hiccup of a subduction earthquake. Maybe descending smoothly, becoming molten, emerging fiery from an inland volcano, cooling to subtend a forest. This flux of storm and tide where humans persist with highways and hotels, small birds swing to and fro, fish and fishers swirl together. Where waves thin as window glass separate the living from the dead-but-about-to-live-again-in-another-form. Where life tips sideways trying to fit.
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