into stillness

There was a huge fog bank in the eastern part of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Admiralty Inlet today, appearing as a solid wall of smoky whiteness. Whidbey Island disappeared, and only the very peak of Mt. Baker was visible from the beach. I had to drive into town this afternoon to run some errands, and though I could see the ferry emerging from that veil, it still felt as though this was Brigadoon, and our day was over for another 100 years.

I am told, by one who supposedly knows such things, that the salmon are running deep and heading right for the creeks. I guess so, since we haven't seen them jumping about in the baywaters in anything like the numbers we did last season. In any case, I like the image, the metaphor, of what the coho, chinook and chum are doing right now.

So I observe the vine maples turning delicious oranges and reds, the digger bees in their last flurry of mating, and the sun slipping below the tops of trees even in the middle of the day. Another glorious summer is coming to an end up here on the peninsula. The Dall's porpoises have been feeding lazily in the bay, and a solitary common loon skirts the shoreline in the evenings. The eagles have returned after their absence during the dryest part of the season.

My nerve endings have recovered from the last few years of trauma to the point where I'm realizing that tension is moving out of my body, and anxiety is becoming a distant memory. The approach of the rainy season feels timely to me, with the morning fogs and coral sunsets. Friends are gathering again and we have a few trips planned to recharge our batteries together. In a week or so our end-of-the-day walks will involve star-gazing if the nights are clear, as they often are, even in the rainy season. It will seem unlikely that we stood on the beach at 10 p.m. just a few short months ago, in bright daylight, but we'll welcome back the vibrant moon and the nighttime spring tides.

But that's what time it is. End of September. Just about the perfect time to run deep and head straight for the creeks.