Good morning from Pt. Reyes,

I’m drawn to the edges, to points, tips, and places where things begin and end at the same time. Where the getting there takes effort and the returning from even more. Where the potential change of temperature and mood in between coming and going is unsettling, enervating, uplifting, perhaps even dangerous. Where I depart a slightly different person than I was on arriving.

To places the sounds, sights, smells, tastes and feelings of which, once experienced, cannot be washed or brushed off, or easily replaced with other sensory stimuli. To places that beg to be committed to memory in a photograph, as a shield against the incessant infiltration of images and thoughts that will relentlessly, inevitably and willfully fill up my every day life once reality has forced my retreat from the edge.

I do not go when there are crowds or lines. No, I need an unimpeded view such that no other human being’s emotional and physical composition presents a challenge to my communion with the edge.

I close my eyes and imagination what the edge is like in the middle of the night, in the middle of a dense fog, in the middle of a storm, at Summer and Winter Solstice, at Spring and Fall Equinox.

I open my eyes knowing that when I turn to leave and can no longer see it, the edge will care not a whit about my absence. Yet I will think about it every day until I can return again. Such is the power the edge has always had over me.

Giselle