Nitinaht, Vancouver Island

I know a place where the wind is unspooling always

tangling and untangling in the coastal firs,

streaming between the whitecaps and threading the bumblebees like beads

on and off of the wild roses.

Tents bloom in unlikely places.

Everyone is encamped in the thickets of things – caravans of windsurfers bring boards and bright sails to the beach (really a ruins of rocks and driftwood),

and Starboard pennants fly from shattered tree trunks.

The thin shore is a strange buffer between two worlds:

a van-crammed campground defined by narrow spaces, where bushes are shelves for wrens and jays and little berries,

and a stretch of ocean to converse with in the language of adrenalin: a primal creole of surge and swell.