There is a boat washed up on the bay at Squalicum beach. It’s a big sailboat. Most of what you see of the boat was meant to be underwater, but it’s flipped over on the shore, and it looks enormous. It was improperly moored in a storm, and now its weight is just crushing itself like a beached whale. You can climb on the side of the boat and look under the deck at all the smashed cabinetry and plumbing. The water made it light, elegant, zippy, but now on the rocks it’s impossibly heavy, totally broken. I saw it at the beginning of the last snowstorm, and the whole thing was so beautiful and incongruous and unforgettable, with big fat flakes melting in the receding tide and turning the sand white in the twilight. I love walking on the beach, it makes me think of when I lived in Port Townsend. I could walk on the beach and feel peaceful, with water on one side, and a sandstone cliff on the other.
