Not Bad, Not Bad At All

Trey Smith

As I have shared with you in this space, I did not want to move from South Bend. I liked the community. I really liked our house and I certainly liked the routine I had established. The very idea of messing up such a well-established routine rendered me anxious and quite unhappy. In fact, due to my sadness, I tended to focus on the negatives and not the positives.

Recently, one of those positives slapped me in the face.

I took Jaz (the big dog) to a state park located only 2 miles north of Ocean Shores. We parked in the day use area and then hiked through the dunes to get to the beach. Sitting atop a rather large sand dune, the two of us sat there staring at the majesty of the Pacific Ocean. We listened to the surf crashing ashore and we watched the waves turn into churning foam. We also watched the storm clouds approaching from the west and didn't quite make it back to the car before the heavens opened up on us. :-D

Each day I have been here -- with one exception -- Jaz and I have trekked to the ocean's edge. One day last week, we stood on a dune to stare into the face of almost gale force winds and rain falling vertically!

It seems that I had forgotten just how much I love the ocean. I find it mesmerizing...and calming. I can sit for hours doing nothing except watching the waves and listening the roar of the surf. In fact, as Della had noted to me previously, you can hear the roar of the ocean in the courtyard of our apartment complex. Late at night, when the rest of the town has grown silent, we sit in front of our apartment listening to the ocean as if it were right next to us -- it almost is!

While many aspects of this move still bug me, I am able to see one of the big perks. After all these years, Della and I finally realized a shared dream: living in a community that abuts the Pacific Ocean!