Twelve

Since we’re getting in the habit of achieving last summer’s goals, I decided that it would be fun to finally go on that coastal hike that Michael and I wanted to do last year. Unfortunately, when I checked out the trail I found that, once again, we would have a high tide problem. But you know what? I’m sick of obstacles. I’m sick of Mother Nature trying to tell me what I can and cannot do. So I persuaded Michael that we could get to the coast, hike the several miles in to the beach, and see all the natural wonderfulness before the ocean whisked us away.

This, apparently, was an error in judgment. Tides do not like sassy ladies to challenge their authority. More on that later.

We deposited the kids with my parents (Junk food! Toys! Constant attention!), and headed out for the drive to the ocean. We used to be road trip experts. There was no blue highway too rural for us. So much of our history together involves a travelling adventure or an odyssey. But these days, I am tired. Time is in short supply, and my butt gets sore if I sit too long.

We discovered this time around that what may look like a short distance on a map could really be a very lengthy, tedious drive on a poorly-maintained gravelly road. I had hoped to spend a little time in a town called Pysht --- because, really, how funny a name is that!? I thought, “Hey! I could do a remote blog from Pysht!” But it seems that Pysht is too small a place to actually have a building, so we must have driven right through it. This cracked me up. “Hey Michael,” I said. “I think we already pashed Pysht. I am Pysht off! Hee Hee Hee.” (At this point, Michael thwacked me on the back of the head with the map).

My interest in Pysht reminded me of one of our notorious wild goose chases. We were on a road trip up to the Canadian Rockies, and we decided to meander through rural Washington instead of taking the direct route. In particular, I saw on the map that Ronald McDonald was buried in the northeastern part of the state. No one told me that he had died! Poor, grief-stricken Hamburgler! We definitely needed to go see Ronald’s grave and lay a greasy french-fry bag by his headstone. Something like seven hours later, we finally stumbled upon his memorial site. Except this wasn’t Ronald McDonald’s grave after all. It was the gravesite of RANALD MACDONALD -- not a junk food-selling clown, but, rather, the first man to teach English in Japan. My dream of standing on a mountaintop and mournfully singing the early 1980s jingle, “Big Mac, Filet O’Fish, Quarter Pounder, French Fries, Icy Coke, Thick Shake, Sundaes, and Apple Pies,” was dashed.

Anyway, once we pashed Pysht, it was a mere 2 more hours to our destination. This offered me the opportunity to ask Michael, “What are you thinking about?” nearly 3000 times (His responses: nothing, baseball, weather, nothing). I have since learned that it was a good thing that we did not stop to explore the loveliness that would have been Pysht, because a human foot in a tennis shoe washed up on the nearby shore of the Strait of Juan de Fuca that very day. Many such disembodied feet are turning up on beaches throughout the area, inspiring feelings of general creepiness and providing a reminder to keep up-to-date with one's pedicure.

We arrived at the trailhead just in time for the rain to start. The hike involved three miles of boardwalk trail to the beach, three miles along the beach, and then three miles back along a different boardwalk. Michael went into the ranger station (remember how he loves a pretty ranger?) and was told that high tides were no problem. You just had to climb up and over the impassible parts. In my normal, city life, I tend to walk about 3 miles a day. 9 miles with a little up-and-over shouldn’t feel that different, right?

Wrong.

3 miles along a rocky beach with the tide rushing in does not make for an easy stroll. To this place’s credit, it may have been the most gorgeous, rugged, jagged coastline I had ever seen. And for a moment, I sighed heavily and drank in that seemingly untouched beauty.

Then I had to stop sighing and climb upon a huge dead tree and slide my way across its branches to escape the rushing water. After that, we had to lie down flat and wiggle on our stomachs to get under the next fallen tree. A quick shimmy up some enormous boulders preceded the realization that we were completely stuck. I’m not sure what was louder – the crash of the waves or the crescendo of my whine.

So Michael, what you may not have heard over the noise was the fact that there is no one I’d rather dangle off the edge of the world with than you (even if I get blisters and the bugs make it impossible for me to eat my lunch). Happy 12th anniversary.