postcard from Ogden Point

I’ve just returned from walking to the end of the breakwater and back. It has guardrails all along its length—I think the sign said it’s 765 meters—and I thought how I used to walk it in my adolescence, its surface slippery with rain, and later, with boyfriends on dark Friday evenings, and how it seemed that one good wave could wash me away.

This morning? No such danger. Soft air, soft water, a heron fishing from the kelp beds, and only the faintest memory of cold nights arm-in-arm with boys whose names I’ve forgotten.