After the Pacific Northwest

It's back in Ohio after being out in the Pacific Northwest gorging on crab and salmon, fresh caught, grilled on the beach, smoky salty and sweet all at once. After our engorgement, we lay on the beach under mover's blankets watching the meteor shower with my best friend Dani and her love Andy.

We listened to the swish of waves over the rocks - agates, carnelian, jasper, granite, shale. They knew a beach untouched by tourists, a local's preserve, a teenage hangout on one of the San Juan Islands. We revelled in it - next year it gets new owners and we will be turfed out by watchdogs, human and canine.

I love the beach with a deep love that gets fed by salt water every time I return to my childhood home and memories of swimming in water which numbed us before August and chilled us thereafter. We'd dive into the water with our open wounds, and it would sting and heal us. Any scrape or cut and we'd be sent into the salt with directions to bathe.

Now, returning to the Midwest, I reluctantly launder my clothes. I want the smoke to stick. I want to stink of smoke and salt, and greet the memory of seaweed and kelp when I wear them. I convince myself to wash them, eventually.

Ohio's as hot as ever. Tonight we ate from the garden - peppers, chilis, corn, tomatos with black beans, cumin and coriander. A fragrant, favorite meal. Soon, school begins and the autumn chores of pruning and moving trees. But I collected 38 stones on the beach for a medicine wheel, and keep them in my kitchen in the form of a sacred hoop, with horseclam shells and a sprig of cedar as living memories of the place I will always call home.