Standing in the salty water, the long four wheel drive and pre dawn alarm that it took to get here are distant memories.  The Pacific is calm and playful this morning.  Unusual for Moomomi preserve with its wind whipped dunes.  I watch the small joyful waves jump into the air as they tease the rocky shore.  With every whoosh they say ‘we will not win today, nor tomorrow, nor the day after that.  But someday our persistence will whittle you down to sand and smooth your rocky face’. I lower my camera to inches above the water and for a moment – for many moments, time stood still.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this.
-  Henry David Thoreau

Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live. -Dorothy Thompson

Carved into the nook of a rock, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, this cross keeps vigil for a life lost on a treacherous turn in the road.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
- Henry David Thoreau

The life I imagined is made of the mosaic of thousands of pieces that often only fit together in the wisdom of hindsight.