Yesterday, I stood on the glittering sand of Bandon, Oregon, and gazed out at the silvery-blue ocean as the wind slashed through my hair. Powder-fine sand whisked over the beach like mist as massive boulders rose from the high tide. The sun shone fiercely overhead as Zach and I hiked up and down the coast, pausing by a cluster of boulders to eat the sandwiches we had packed.
Today, I stood on a damp trail in the middle of the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, and stared at a milennium-old redwood towering over my head. I breathed in the wet stillness in the air, feeling that I had been turned into a mouse, gazing up at the multi-trunked tree at least twenty feet in diameter. The grooves in the bark ran up to the crown: fluting on a massive natural column. Zach and I continued our twelve-mile hike, winding our way between the mammoth trees, to the open deciduous forest by the seaside, then back into the redwoods. Darkness seeped into the forest, turning everything to green and gray. My breath quickened in my lungs.
Tonight, I ate toast and honey and sat by the fireside at our couchsurfing host’s house. Two other surfers, Monica and Martina from Switzerland, shared a meal, as they have been doing for the past three years as they’ve biked from the southern tip of Argentina. Exhaustion tugged at my legs. I retreated to my room and sank onto the bed. Warmth wrapped me up. Sleep beckoned. But first, I had to post this blog…
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