addendum b: lookout

For the week of my birthday, which was otherwise celebrated in subdued fashion, I snagged a night in one of the cabins at Cape Lookout State Park. The price was a bit steep for what it offered, both more and less than what I needed, but the view on a still and sunny fall day was incredible. The cabins are surrounded by trees that drop off onto soft sand licked by Pacific waves. No other landscape echoes through me quite so sweetly. The sound of the the ocean, the smell of the ocean. The sound of the woods, the smell of the woods. The reverberations through my breath and through my blood feel most like my breath and blood. As if every inhale is yes. Every exhale, yes again.

For the afternoon and evening, I reveled in the woody, watery bliss of the campground. The next morning, my friend I took a two-hour hike to the tip of the cape, challenging an injured muscle in my leg and my allergy-ridden and unexcercised lungs. I was rewarded with the buzz of moving quickly. The buzz of green and where there wasn’t green then brown and where there wasn’t brown then blue. Blue ocean and blue sky and a silence stippled with the sound of bird wings. In other words, perfect. In other words, yes.