I went paddling a few nights ago. Warm day, high tide. You can never tell what the ocean (or lagoon, lake, river) will be like until you get right there. So many variables: wind, tides, temperature, sunny or foggy or rainy, moon (and planetary) cycle, but the most important factor to me is the surface of the water. If it’s glassy, I don’t care about any of the rest of it. My (Joe Bark 12′ Surftek) paddleboard skims across the water, I get a bow wave going, a joy to paddle.

   I ended up taking a mud bath, for the first time in months. It’s one of those things, like jumping under a cold waterfall, that you’re always glad you did, but that the part of your brain concerned with comfort, resists. I told a couple of friends at the dock that’s what I was going to do, so had to do it. Paddled a ways…shorty wetsuit off (not visible to anyone), smeared as much of my body as I could reach with mud, which in this case had sand in it,…let dry in sun a few minutes, then swam in a channel a bit, then washed it off. Boy did I feel good.

   Got home, took outdoor solar shower, heated by nothin but sunshine…then shot of grappa…stylin…turned out to be exfoliating…spa treatment…skin really smooth afterwards…simple pleasures of life…so much you can do right around wherever you live…just look around…

Tide pools, coves, caves. Great idea for kayak trip from Pt. Arena lighthouse south the Pt. Arena pier — gonna do sometime.

   Again, I’m frustrated by the narrowness of the screen. I’m going to print out 4×5’s when I get home, mount on board (and bring to Louie). The first stitched-together series of stills I ever saw was on the wall of Robert Frank’s home on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. Black and whites. Then I discovered the photo collages of David Hockney and bought his book Cameraworks. Such an eye-opener.

   I prefer to shoot with a 50mm or so lens setting, it’s pretty much the way I see the world (as opposed to wider angled lenses, which distort things), then paste them together. (When shooting a building, I keep backing up and adjusting the zoom until it looks through the lens the way appears to my eye.)

The drive to Pt. Arena is about 3 hours. Usually takes me about 4. This time, leaving in the afternoon, instead of (as usual) early morning, it took me 8 hours to get to Louie’s. Did I have fun! I must have stopped, usually to shoot photos, 50 times…I’m thinking of changing the nature of this blog once we get THESHELTERBLOG up and running, maybe tie it in with Instagram, a photo+ caption a day. More like getting you to ride shotgun with me. For example:

Anywhere on this Pacific Coast, there are creek beds, rivers, canyons running perpendicular to the ocean. Water-carved arroyos. As you drive, you can look down and see if there is a trail down to the beach, and there often is. Just before sunset last night, I spotted the trail here. it was like going through a jungle. A pristine white (dirty white color — the best — sand beach, mountains of driftwood.

I met some nice young people on the beach yesterday and handed their 11-month old toddler a mini copy of Tiny Homes On the Move, which she promptly started reading. So what if it’s upside down? Get ’em started young.

Looks like a huge wave, right? Well, the wave’s about 18″ high and that’s a remote controlled mini surfer, about 6″ high. These things zoom all over the place, do flips, always land right side up. Below looks like tribute to Rainier Ale, we used to call it “green death.”