September 13, 2023
Nothing, Not Much
The ferry to Shaw Island is an hour late, but no matter — I’m just taking short rides between places where I can sit around and do nothing.
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It’s a mile or so to the county park, where I set up the tent at the same hiker-biker site I stayed at on my cross-country trip, a little more than twelve years ago.
It’s been twelve years!
I stare off into the distance and try to wrap my head around all I’ve seen and done and the many distinct lives I’ve led since then and try not to feel old.
A school group is set up at the site next door. It’s so much screaming and grilled meats. But it means the beach is empty, so I wander down to its western end with the tide high as can be. The birds and wasps are busy with their work at the water’s edge and three otters splash and play in the shallows of the bay. The ferry rumbles and clatters and clanks as it motors past, gets quiet as it draws behind Canoe Island as if heading into a tunnel, then roars back to life as it steams away on the other side.
Since having a kid and buying a house and working full time, I wondered if I’d lost the skill of doing nothing. Today reminds me that at my core I’m still the lazy dude I’ve always been.
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7 months ago
For those who wonder what we are talking about. I have a journal from when I was around 9 years old. There isn't much in it but when I thought that really nothing had happened at all on that day I actually wrote down, "Nothing."
As if nothing ever happens! Something always happens! But as a kid I guess I didn't realize that or maybe I didn't have time to write it all down because I was so busy doing nothing. Something to ponder.
7 months ago
7 months ago
It's a different experience writing about a place that I know well, that's full of bike tourists all summer, and where I'm not cranking out long days. In many ways, this trip is the opposite of every other ride I've done and every other journal I've written.
There's also the fact that sometimes I read entries from my old journals and I end up thinking, God, just wrap it up already, who needs a paragraph about the pizza you just ate?
It feels good to change things up. But you already knew that!
7 months ago