“What will I be doing?” said Pooh. “Well, Pooh, you'll be sitting in your thotful spot thinking as usual.”
A.A. Milne
I am feeling a bit like Winnie The Pooh. It only took me 17 years to actually come here. I would walk by and think to myself, I really must return with a picnic and a good book and make a day of it. Years have passed. Today is the day. Lucky me. Here the pretty, white shell beach, reveals this to be a midden in days of yore and the sound of lapping of waves is soothing. The land is dry and the arbutus leaves rattle disconsolately nearby as a breeze moves through them. The grove of maidens are in a state of dismayed dissaray as their bark hangs in great swathes revealing a smooth, sensuous, skin beneath red, blistering, peels. The ladies are bashful it would seem. I look respectfully away sensing something. I glance uneasily over my shoulder. Nothing is there. This land has spirits. I feel it every time I come here. Above, old man’s beard hangs in shaggy strips from an ancient gnarled Douglas Fir twisted by winter storms. Is that a seal making that mournful loud cry? It sounds like a silkie. Despite the sense of other worldliness here, the day is bright and breezy.
The sun lights up the landscape with a palette that is the west coast greens, grays, and gold of the grasses. I dip my brush into my paints. “Thotful spots” are a sense of communing with nature in a way a camera lens cannot evoke nor a canvas convey.