“The soul, like the sea, carries each shore it has ever touched.” ~Wylddane
There are days—especially during summer’s relentless heat, when the air hangs heavy with humidity and every breath feels wrapped in gauze—when my soul seeks a breeze it once knew. A breeze tinged with salt. A whisper of wind that traveled across the Pacific and curled into my life with the ease of something eternal.
This morning, as I cradle a steaming mug of coffee and watch the haze blur the outlines of my forest home, I find myself drifting—not away from the moment, but deeper into it. For memory, when guided by love, becomes something more than thought. It becomes presence. It becomes home.
The image I took—this one, of Sharp Beach in Pacifica...captures more than light on the curve of a day. It holds the hush that follows rain. The warm softness of the sun as it sinks behind painted clouds. The outline of hills that feel both vast and familiar, echoing with the sacred hush of retreating tide. I remember walking there as the afternoon dissolved into dusk, the sky ablaze with color, and my footsteps tracing the tide’s conversation with the land.
On mornings like this, Pacifica comes alive again...not merely as memory, but as part of me. Pedro Point, Rockaway Beach, and Sharp Park, each a different rhythm in a long, comforting song. The scent of ocean air, the lullaby of waves, the simple joy of ducking into a local café still damp from a beach walk. And always, the nearness of San Francisco...just a heartbeat over the hills, another world that was still somehow mine.
Yet here, in my beloved Northwoods, the day stirs too. A different music rises...the hush of wind in pine branches, the steady presence of river and forest, the quiet companionship of the cottontail rabbit beneath my deck. My wee cottage, surrounded by green and shadow and birdsong, has its own magic. Its own language of home.
And so I wonder: what is home, truly?
They say home is where the heart is. Perhaps that means the heart is more than one thing...more than one place. Perhaps we are not meant to choose between Pacific fog and northern stillness. Perhaps the soul is expansive enough to hold both.
This morning, I am living proof that two places can be true at once. Pacifica, with its salt-kissed evenings and crashing surf, is as real to me now as the mist-hung forest outside my window. And both are sacred.
What a wonderful life it is...to have lived in places that feel like chapters from a love letter written by the Universe itself.
What a wonderful day this is...to sip coffee beside a haze-softened woodland and know that somewhere within me, the ocean still sings.
I am at home.
~Wylddane
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