I roll down the car windows and the salty air crackles, the ocean aloft meets me. My body changes.
The salty water in me finds the salty water around me and a deep feeling of belonging drops into my heart, like the weight of something just heavy enough to feel.
I remember that same smell the first time I ever came to this end of the earth place. I don’t remember if I’d ever smelled it before though I’d been at the sea many times. I was young and new and becoming myself and free. Things landed deeply in me then.
We arrived at night and in that state of opaque darkness all the smells were bigger and the sounds greater and the feelings more. Maybe it was at that precise moment that a singular thought bubbled up in me, “Home.” Or maybe it was later, but by morning when the sun shone bright reflecting off the bay, my heart grew a size.
Vast, this place was, though the land, dwarfed by the sea, was just a spit, a finger reaching out. Vast, this life was, and I could feel it.