Reach The Beach, Part 2

So, we got back to the house fine. My finger hurt something awful, but I considered myself lucky as none of the things on the bad list from yesterday happened. And Jason found my glasses…

We regrouped (well, Jason and I regrouped; Mandy had gone to bed and now so was Beth), we re-drank, and we set out again for the beach, this time by a stable road.

See, the original plan was to watch the sun come up and enter into the New Year by jumping into the North Sound. Well, that was my original plan anyway. That was before I realized I would have to enjoy a fifteen minute walk back to the house, dripping wet from a body of water that is shockingly cold in the summer, when it was ass cold outside as well.

Jason and I set off in the dark and got to the deserted beach somewhere near 7 in the morning. We stared out at the silhouettes of other islands, at the lights coming from Canada. Jason tossed a small, red glow stick into the water. I don’t think he was being malicious, I think he expected the waves to bring it right back to him. But that spooky, round the island current hit the thing about a foot and half out and yanked it. That glowing red plastic pulled out in the deep like it had a motor on it, like it was harpooned to a shark that was taking it to Vancouver, the fucker went out faster than I ever thought it would be possible to.

We watched it go, following that radiant red pulse down the beach until we couldn’t see it anymore. I thought about the fish perhaps being pulled towards it by the excitement of this new, glowing visitor to their domain. When we couldn’t tell if what we were seeing was actually the glow stick at distance, or if it was just fantasies of our addled brains, we just stood staring out the dark water and talking.

I love being near the water, standing at the verge; it always feels momentous somehow. And it always feels like home.

We talked about religion, and we talked about god and we talked about whatever entered our heads to talk about, but we mostly stared out into that water. At some point I noticed that there was a tiny bit of phosphorescence in the surf, little green sparks that came alive in the water. I was trying to point them out to Jason, but he thought I was tripping. I was beginning to agree when we saw some more and I started grinning at being able to be there when he saw it for the first time, remembering my uncle pointing it out to me when I was a kid.

The wind picked up and the waves got pretty large for the Sound. If it wasn’t getting to be uncomfortably cold, I probably could have stayed out there for hours. As we were leaving we both thought we might have seen the glow stick coming back in, riding the surf, returning to wish us a Happy New Year and salutations from International Waters.