Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Light in dark times / An open window to the Pacific Ocean / A Mother's Day gift




































Coast Salish lands

Make sure to watch the video at 2 of 10 in the photo section of the article.

On Mother's Day, an old friend who is a year older than I am and is being treated for breast cancer suggested that we take an hour's drive to the beach just beyond the Deception Pass bridge.  More than 40 years ago, I had walked on the beach in the first photo but until Mother's Day this year, I had no knowledge that there was a beach with waves just around the point.  The Deception Pass State Park West Beach looks out on the Strait of Juan de Fuca and out to the Pacific Ocean and then way way out across that vast ocean to Asia.

For years I have had a recurring dream that there is a beach with waves just down the road from Bellingham.  It is an exhilarating dream, filled with hope and promise and joy.  In the dream, I always ask myself how I could not have known that the open ocean was so close by.  Waking up from that dream was always bittersweet, and I would find myself yearning to return to my birthplace on the western side of California, where the open ocean is always so near.

A dream come true on Mother's Day.  There is a window to the open ocean, and that window is only an hour's drive from Bellingham.
















Sweet that the land and sky and waters of the Coast Salish people are no longer threatened by the presence of coal port.

Sweet that the gift of good news came so close to Mother's Day.

The mother of us all.  Mother Earth.

2 comments:

Tara said...

Beautifully written post. I didn't know about the Lumi issue until I saw the news today. It is great news, indeed.

I love your dream, and I love that you discovered that window in your own neck of the woods. Wonderful.

Anonymous said...

I used to dream that the town I lived in was surrounded by rocky mountain peaks - just the kind I like scrambling over.

Predictive text really gets on my nerves! Like a sheepdog rounding up my words. It decided my "rocky" needed an upper case R. My rocky peaks are a lot littler than that.