Epiphany

 January 6, 2024

Epiphany

The most inclement weather conceivable short of hurricane. The sea is white here and gray there for reasons I don’t completely understand. Formidable, terrible, delightful. I can lounge about all day feeling storm-tossed and melancholy. The line between sky and sea is erased.

Yesterday we had a leisurely breakfast, then chartered a boat with Captain PD– a tiny, tiny boat with room enough only for the people who were in it– and toured the river and various creeks, braving the actual ocean only briefly, because of the terrible wind. The guy at the hotel told us the boat would cancel because of the weather, but it didn’t. Captain PD said he almost canceled, but didn’t. This did not inspire confidence. The sea was choppy, but I didn’t get sick, which was a relief. Wind was the real issue, so cold and constant that the last hour of the tour was misery, though each of us determined not to be the one who said, “Ok, enough.” Captain PD fished a duck decoy out of the water. It concerned him for reasons not fully articulated. As promised, we saw many a dolphin, lovely and gleaming and fluid, mostly arcing out of the water side by side so two or three looked like one animal. I kept wondering how they stood the cold. At one point a bull, interested in a cow (is that what she’s called?) tossed a baby out of the way with some brutality, it seemed to us. Maybe that’s everyday to a young dolphin. Our physical discomfort is what will likely stick with us, and our grim refusal to admit to it. The Captain paused and detoured and extended, searching for wildlife, wanting to give us our money’s worth, so he is blameless. L and I limped to the car incapacitated by cold; J bent over from having to go to the bathroom so bad. In time it will be hilarious. 

They’re off, and I return to my accustomed (and capacious) solitude. 

Storm abated. Lunch at the Jack of Cups, by far the best cuisine at Folly.

Mist came: the end of the pier and all but the close breaking waves disappeared.

Laughing voices in on the patio below my window.