Baker day

It's a good day when you can see Baker. Acrylic. 18" x 24"

It’s a good day when you can see Baker.

Not today, though. I thought so for a minute. Then the wind whipped my hair across my eyes and, when I looked again, there were too many clouds.

There is hardly anyone at the beach. It has been raining for days. I don’t remember how many. One rainy day blends into the next, like watercolor on wet paper.  But then today, late in the afternoon, the wind picked up and the sky cleared to a cerulean blue.

You could never call the sky here just blue. Or gray. It has a life and its colors are not just colors but air infused with sea light and forest shadow, shifting with the wind, blending with the mountains and melting into the gulf.

The beach is seven minutes away from home. A seven minute drive past rhododendrons in raw pigments of vermilion, magenta, carmine, cadmium red, carnelian, rose madder, alizarin crimson. Hedges of Prussian blue ceanothus. Cadmium yellow Scotch broom which everybody here hates and pulls out by the roots. I love its cheerful tenacity.

The dog is quiet in the back seat of the car but won’t sit down. She balances herself upright, feet spread, tail down. She’s too small to see out of the window but she knows when we’re headed for the beach.

I wonder if the dog feels the thrill of anticipation. I have heard dogs have no sense of time. For this one, riding in the car to the beach and chasing a big black Lab into the water are all the same moment. Einstein’s comment about time doesn’t work for dogs. For them, everything does happen at once.

How intense that must be. And exhausting. No wonder dogs sleep twenty hours a day.

The dog ejects from the car as soon as I open the door and runs yapping at the nearest black Lab’s heels.

I look for Baker.

A pair of herons bookend a tide pool. A seal flips me the bird with its tail as it dives.

I catch a glimpse, a white clad shoulder. But then, like Frodo when he puts on the ring, a dark mist descends. I watch it move across the gulf.

I give up squinting across the bright water, look down at the high water line, find tangled in dried kelp a perfect crab shell, claws tucked in, all of its other limbs intact. It weighs nothing. I put it in my pocket. It will be part of a collage I'm making.

I call the dog and she pretends not to hear. I promise her cheese. She thinks about it, then comes trotting.

When I get home a little later I go online to find out why no Baker today.

I read, Mount Baker weather forecast: Rain showers before 11am, then snow showers likely. Snow level 5900 feet lowering to 5100 feet. High near 44. South southwest wind between 8 and 10 mph. Chance of precipitation 80%.

I realize I've got it wrong. It’s a good day here every day.

But it’s a great day when you can see Baker.