It’s storm season. The best time to be here. On clear days there is just horizon, vast and unending until the shores of Japan. But not today. Not today or tomorrow or the day after that. In fact, for weeks until spring will be all roil and smash, hurl and tumult, wind and squall, thunder and lightening and rage.
You buy rain gear at the supply store in town. It’s yellow and heavy and rubber; old school. She looks like she has been wearing it her whole life. Your sleeves don’t quite reach your wrists and your pants end some distance from your ankles.
On the beach hidden amongst the driftwood are large glass weights, translucent green and the size of grapefruits, used to keep the nets down; bright orange buoys, the kind flung over deck, protection of dock from haul and haul from dock; pieces of thick rope, knotted and oily; eagle feathers, black and white and grey, long and light and stiff; so sharp at the point of the hollow shaft that you are sure you could write with it.
Hundreds of bull kelp strewn about the sand. Large bulbous heads attached to impossibly long tapered tails.
Migration.
As if in mid voyage, an inexplicable urge; an electrical pulse of confusion blazes through their neurons causing them to
change course.
Tails whipping through the water; gliding in the slipstream of their brothers and sisters; the current pushing them fast through the dark sea. Some primal flaw convincing “this way to the breeding grounds”.
Their momentum carries them far up on shore. Sharp rocks gouge and tear their smooth bodies. Landfall sucks oxygen from their lungs.
They die on a beach, a hundred miles from any kind of help. Where on a clear day you can see most of the way to Japan.
John's Writing 