A chorus of crunching on crisp leaves, like heavy, sporadic raindrops on a summer eve, sounds from the overgrown Dutchman’s pipevine.

The weight is what I remember, how quickly my bare feet sunk into the small patches of sand.

A scraggly head poked up from the nest, and another, until all three mango colored bills were visible. They yawned at the great big sky.

The sun is setting, but the only orange thing we see is a fluorescent fungus, a gorgeous specimen with overflowing folds.

“Slurp, burble, gulp,” my sister Danielle chants as the slippery mud swallows her Vibram sneakers with every step. “It’s eating me alive!”

We’ve traveled 2,000 miles to see the ocean claw at the jagged edge of everything I’ve known and the whole state glisten with winter rain.

I want only to walk, not to arrive at the falls but something greater, a destination that stretches endlessly from the salmon to the sea.

The grey sky touches the ocean horizon, and sheer rock face drops to a cacophony of crashing waves.

She twists her head and stares at me with clouded eyes, then proceeds cautiously onto my skin, each movement meditated.