5/29/2011 - the moment I saw the ocean. . .

Grr was quite the pill this morning.  With a full night of sleep behind him, he was overexcited about everything and zealously mischievous, nipping at the drawstrings of my pants, refusing to sit when I told him to, and just trying to be as underfoot as he possibly could be.  If I took the effort to look into his eyes, which was difficult given his unstoppable velocity, his pupils would likely have been the size of dinner plates.

In order to preserve our sanity, as well as the hardwood floors, which his nails clawed at mercilessly for traction to sprint him from one end of the room to the other, Sam and I knew we had to take him out and let his energy dissipate.  So, after breakfast and a Law & Order rerun, we drove out to Fort Funston.  The sun shone at full force, but the day was deceptively cold.  When we stepped out of the car, I think we both realized how far we were from last weekend, when we would have already been sweating in the 85-degree, mid-morning air of downtown Palm Springs.

Though we have our usual paths through Funston's maze-like trails, we let Grr lead the way today, tromping across fields of ice vines that eventually opened up to a beachfront cliff about 50 feet above the water.  The ocean was particularly turbulent this morning.  When we approached the edge, I looked out across the horizon and saw a procession of waves, outlined by frothy white lines, rolling toward the sand, like an incoming armada of marauding ships.

It was so beautiful, majestic and ominous.  Though I stood safely perched above it all, the movement of the ocean seemed strong and wide enough to sweep me out simply because I bore witness to its arrival upon the land.  Grr, however, couldn't have cared less, if he even saw it at all.  He was too busy racing up and down the sand dunes, climbing to the top and charging to the bottom.  Sam wondered why he enjoys hills so much.  The only explanation I had was to compare him to a child running as fast as he could down a hill, feeling as though he could fly if he just put his arms out and believed.

The wind was loud in my ears, and the sun hung low in a crystalline sky.  We took our sandals off and walked barefoot across the sand.  Every so often, we would step into a warm spot, a patch of ground baked in the sun and shielded from wind, and for those brief moments, I could imagine my feet sinking into the beach on Waikiki.  But then, almost immediately, I would also know that it would not be as much fun, not filled with nearly as much wonderment as the moment I saw the ocean, really saw it today, when Grr led us to it, eager to see and smell and be a part of all that there ever was and likely ever will be: sand, ocean, sky.

* Not from today, but a picture I like of my two best pups.