Coastal Termination Trail

Still under the weather, my sickly soul was drawn outside by the big blooming sun, bold between the blue sky and teal waters. Tunes in my car and a short, slippery eleven miles north later I was hop-scotching across the frozen creek bank towards Monashka Bay.

A mother and small child sat at a picnic table, letting the warming rays soak into their burdens of clothing, and into the deep piles of their rambunctious dog's fur. Always one for solitude, today was no different, so I turned these humans towards my back and set my face and feet east.

Termination Point plays host to a wandering menagerie of trails - the coastal, the Two Bears cove, the Monashka Mountain, and a whole panoply of sub-trails criss-crossing between the larger beasts. I strode upon the back of the writhing creature known as the Coastal Termination trail.

Into the woods I went, until the woods were spent, and spit me out upon a bluff. Far below me the sea churned, bursting its energy upon the cliffs. I crawled back into a bed of duff beneath evergreens. Silent, glorying in the glory of the golden orb, a squirrel nearly stepped upon me in its haste to stow a nut carefully held between its teeth. Unsure of my position on squirrel meat, this swift chatter-box ran back the way it had come. From its known safety, the creature told me of its opinion of my position and where I could take myself.

Leaving my cubby-hole, the trail sent me along further and soon disgorged my feet upon an unpeopled shoreline, cobbled with large, smooth stone, caressed by the sweet undulations of the sea's vacillations. Somehow, some bus had misplaced a bench seat that had found a resting place there. I reclined for nearly an hour, silent in contemplation of the ebb and flood before me.

Not far from here, someone had constructed a driftwood cabin, a nice place for a night in the woods. As the sun began to shine more fully on those further west, I retraced my steps through the woods, along the cliff, and against the curve of the bay, thankful for yet another day to love the living of life.