Today is a sigh

Just in from an hour SUPping around Mannion Bay and Miller’s Landing. It is sunny and warm today – 5 degrees C – and there is not a breath of wind out.  The water is so calm there isn’t even any swell in the Queen Charlotte Channel.  Everything is flat and calm and quiet, like a long sigh.

I started out from Pebbly Beach and rounded the north point.  Headed out towards Miller’s Landing for 20 minutes, and then sat on my board, bobbing on the sea.  Out in the channel, a seal was splashing.  No sign of the huge pod of hundreds of dolphins that had been spotted earlier this week of Cowan Point.  Utter calm.  Utter, utter calm.

It could have been a summer evening on the water except that there were no boats around.  I had the whole of Howe Sound to myself.

Coming up from the beach I ran into Norma Dallas who owns the Bowen island Marina and we talked about what it feels like to be out on the water all alone on days like this.  We agreed that the words to describe it are “humility” and “gratitude.”  That we are alive to experience this is simply a gift.  To have snow capped mountains and a calm ocean to hold me, is an incredible thing.  To feel my smallness in all of that timeless beauty is a fine teaching.