I’ve started keeping a book again. Not a logbook in the true sense — no times, no distances. More like sentences that follow me home, once I’m already standing at the dock and really ought to be doing something else.
Today: fog until noon, then light so sharp the pines looked almost black against the sky. I went out alone, the boat loaded with nothing but a thermos and the bow, which lay beside me the whole time, untouched. Sometimes it’s enough that it’s there. Like a friend who doesn’t need to say anything to still be felt.
I stopped in a bay I’ve known for years, and yet today it looked different — the water a little darker, the rock a little warmer, as if summer had decided to show itself one last time before autumn arrives.
I sat there, longer than planned. No reason. Just the feeling that time moves differently here, slower, more honest. The bow stayed where it lay. I never even touched it.
On the way back I thought of someone I’d like to tell about this — how the light looked today, how still the water was, how little I actually needed to feel content. Some people we carry with us, even when they’re not there.
I’m writing this down now, before it fades. Not because I’m afraid of forgetting it. But because I like how it feels to live it once more, while writing it down. As if the day happens a second time, only quieter.
Between the islands.
Between nature and human.
Between experience and trust.
