Views from the Lost Coast

The Lost Coast, Northern California. 2008.

Two pictures this time. I couldn't resist. Somehow the forest in deep fog and the wind swept, chilly beaches are all part of the same feeling. Of entering a truly lost, undisturbed world. Even talking to other people, seeing cars, buying food--nothing could alter the sensation of being an insignificant visitor to something large and solid and unconcerned. As if my entire three day trip was missed because the land blinked.

I find myself thinking about that trip a lot, now that it's fall again. Winter, I should say. The penetrating cold seeping into your flesh. The deep, beautiful gloom. The water-rich sounds. Trickle; rush; suck; drink; slide; wear; pound; fall; coat; sweep; crash. Clouds and streams and saturated dirt and the ocean, always the ocean. Like the out-of-range buzz of a t.v. in another room. You know it's there, you sense it, without knowing how. It's there, reaching out with greedy palms to scrape at the land, gluttonous for more. Eating its way toward you.