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one of these days i'm going to swing my hammer down

away from this red dirt town

i'm going to make a joyful sound

[emmylou harris]

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judy: that was a joke. no cold beer on spike.

taylor: yeah. only warm beer on spike.

judy: also a joke.

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We got back from work. And sometimes work can be wonderful, when you stand out in a stretch of desert at night and watch the sky get lighter, or when you reach the top of the mountain and turn around, but at the end of the day it still has that paid feeling. Sometimes what you really need is the ocean.

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So the next day we drove and drove, and that evening we reached the sea. We didn't have to talk about it. It seemed that the most important thing at that point was to get out of the car and take our shoes off so our feet could gradually shift deeper and deeper into the sand.

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We watched the horizon for a while. It slowly settled into some version of blue, like everything eventually does. Then we walked on the beach, spread out, not speaking. The ocean is like a good mother. You remember most not what she looks like, but the sounds that she makes. They stay with you when everything else has left. The roar, the crashing, the suck of water on sand.

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We stayed on the beach for two days, then when we felt better we drove back. The ocean is almost too wild, too organic to live near. I feel the need to give her space. I was too intimidated to even take one of her shells for my own back to the mountains, back to the cold.

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I'll be back, though. Now that I know what to listen for.