Beach retreat

Writing outside of routine

I awake to a clean-slate sky and warm sun on the eastern windows.

The thing about camping at the beach is that first thing in the morning, the dog needs to go outside to do his business. At home, I just open the back door, and he heads into the yard on his own to christen the bushes. Here, at the beach, he must be leashed, so I go with him through the brush between the trailer to the mudflats of Bodega Bay. We walk the damp but firm ribbon of sand relinquished by the tides. Vato sniffs the fainting seaweed and broken clamshells that decorate the shore. He finds a suitable place to defile, a tangle of invasive (dead) ice plant that’s been uprooted by park volunteers attempting to give native plant life a chance at reestablishing itself. The dog likes the shriveled plant, but not for its beauty; it’s as close as he can find to his preferred toilet medium, disintegrating leaves; it’s familiar, like the leaves that cover our backyard. I pick up his leavings and discard them in the trash.

The thing is, at home, I never go outside and walk before breakfast. I’m ravenous when I wake up and must eat before I can proceed with my day. At the beach, I know the dog’s need is urgent since he cannot open the trailer door himself or walk by himself. So, the stroll before breakfast has become a camping ritual for me.

Later, while I eat oatmeal with a heel of bread and peanut butter, the fog creeps in. Behind me, through the trailer’s rear window over the bed, the sun illuminates the bay and beyond that, the hills. In front of me, in the 270-degree view from the front of the trailer, fog softens the water and smudges the bluffs of Bodega Head.

I’ve renamed the trailer, “The Beach House,” to try and entice my wife to visit me at the campground, which is only 40 minutes from our home. The concept of owning a second home (beach, mountain, or lakeside cabin, what have you) is more familiar to those not from California, where the living is much more affordable. Since she is from the eastern side of the country, I use the second-home metaphor to appeal to her roots.

When she says, “I don’t like to camp at the same place every time,” I answer, “Think of it as our second home and the beach as our property.” It must have swayed her a bit: she came out to see me three times.

As I sit at the dinette, the dog lies on the doormat and gives me a pleading look, then sighs and relaxes his head back on the floor. He wants to run sans leash on the strip of sand by the boat ramp that the park has designated as an off-leash dog area. But I am determined to write in the precious time I have left of this last day of my semi-solo retreat.

When I’m done writing, I take Vato for a ball-chasing outing. Before leaving, I check an online tidal chart to ensure there’s enough exposed land for the dog to frolic. But the chart just gives me numbers. I don’t know what “5” means in relation to high tide or “.23” looks like for a low tide. There is a graph, a wavy line, but I still can’t picture how much beach will present itself.

A bit off topic, but I wonder if the word “tidings” referring to news came from what the tides left on the beach. It makes sense. But if not, I could write an alternate history of the English language since “tidings” is not the first word I’ve pondered. Not that I could recall any of them in the moment.

I think a week's retreat is not long enough for me. Two weeks would be ideal. I could write at least 4 hours a day. But I don’t like to camp when my wife is out of town. When I’m alone at home, that becomes my retreat. I recalibrate my day to my own rhythms, which distort in the presence of another person. Living with someone is both grounding and unsettling. I need her pragmatism to keep me on earth and not out riding the shooting stars of my impulsivity. But I also need unharnessed, unpredictable spontaneity to power my writing. As with most things, I seek balance.

As the daily checkout deadline approaches, campers scheduled to leave today pack up their barbecue grills, camp chairs, and firewood and then depart. The fog horn and meadowlarks sound into the quiet left behind. In the solitude of the Beach House, I return to the page for one last day.

Photo by Jeffrey Hamilton on Unsplash

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