A Familiar Ache

Robert Louis Stevenson, John Steinbeck, Henry Miller, Maya Angelou, Ansel Adams, Jack Kerouac, Joseph Campbell, and Kelly!

We left Jackson three months ago, on the first day of winter when all was cold and dead and gray and brown. Now it's spring, and we are in verdant Morro Bay, where Earth's blooming children delight us with fragrances carried on sweet-salty sea breezes.

My heart has felt light and hopeful on every walk through the rolling green hills, among towering eucalyptus visited by the last of the migrating monarch butterflies, and through the lower growths where bedazzled hummingbirds zip and zoom with their unfathomable ability to suddenly stop and float to eat—or just out of curiosity. They contrast the two turkey vultures, who watch us approach nearly every morning but think little of us from their perch on a dead tree. But even these two bring a smile and a cheerful greeting.

Yesterday at sunset, we mostly had the beach to ourselves. The finest sea mist could be felt but not seen. And the air was painful to inhale simply because it was so beautiful. It reminded me of what we're leaving behind tomorrow.

The sun won't be up for another hour, but the gulls can already be heard above the harbor while the first sea lions are barking. Closer to us, doves coo their songs. This has been our morning rhapsody since last Tuesday when we emerged from the parched desert.

Samwise, who sleeps tightly against my legs each night, is right where he always is before we get out of bed. His unyielding weight is a reassuring anchor. Emily rests her head on the other pillow, pretending to sleep, but an eye flutters open with my every minuscule move.