parktrotter

I was delighted with that house on Tomales Bay–the one I talk about below–because as I have said, I like the ocean. In this house, we got about as much of the ocean as we could handle: we arrived in the dark, at low tide, and were surprised to awaken the next morning and discover that the tide had come in, and we could literally have fished out the kitchen window. The house was set on piles in the water. If I owned the house, that would disturb me: one day, the San Andreas Fault will slip, and the fish and the ocean both may come in through that kitchen window. But during a brief visit, the possibility always seems remote enough that I can ignore it. The photo above is the view from the side door, which was served by a kind of wharf.

These Pt.-Reyes-area houses are always old and quaint–none, none at all, are new. They have been accumulating bric-a-brac for fifty or sixty years, and they groan beneath its weight. This particular house had a sleeping loft that could only be reached by stairs like the kind they have on naval vessels, more a ladder than stairs. I found them oddly terrifying. No matter: I set up my computer at a table overlooking the bay and worked while the full moon rose, and with the reflection off the bay, I hardly needed a light to see.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS