MY DUNE

In the last miles before Drake’s Beach, I once climbed under the barbed-wire fence in this photo (taken yesterday) and hiked out to the dune in the distance with my camera.

The field was treacherously lumpy—with holes and clumps of brush that twisted my ankles—but there were also wild purple irises growing everywhere! I rolled down the dune just for the fun of it, then hiked the rest of the way to the ocean.

This is a backward glance at the terrain I’d just traversed.

In places the iceplant was in full bloom.

But it was dazzlingly colorful even where it wasn’t in flower yet.

Finally I reached the place where the flora met the driftwood of an isolated beach.

The whole trek was such a beautiful private viewing that I decided to return to this theater more than once in the years that followed.