Fri, May 8, 2020
Read in 3 minutes
Seattle Hub, Washington, USA Originally from San Jose, California, USA
My girlfriend and I got up at 1 AM to chase the recent supermoon. We were groggy and felt like shit after only 3 hours of sleep, but we were so stoked to finally be going outdoors once again. Governor Inslee of Washington State recently opened select trails on the 5th, so we wanted to go and stretch our legs somewhere. Problem was, the trails were swarming with people who had the exact same idea. Our go-to resource, Washington Trails Association, showcased trip reports from people who had ventured out on the trails this week. Every report read “… hundreds of cars in lot” or “… people don’t know how to social distance on the trails.” This was obviously troubling since we fucking hate crowds!
So we decided to live a little and chase the moon. It wasn’t going to be the largest supermoon, but we knew it’d be beautiful nonetheless. So we stuffed our down-filled sleeping bags, loads of snacks, and the dog into the car and headed out. We could have stayed close to Seattle and slept a bit more, but we really wanted to see the moon over the open ocean. So we decided to drive out three hours to the Southwestern part of the Olympic Peninsula, near the famous resort of Ocean Shores.
The drive was magical. No one else was out and the moon kept bobbing and weaving in and out of the trees. We listened to dumb podcasts, great music, and stared at the beautiful moonlight outside. Once we hit the shore, we followed it until we reached Pacific Beach State Park. Even though Inslee had opened up the State Parks, the gates were still closed off to cars. So we parked outside someone’s vacation house, that can only be described as “v bouge”, and ambled over the berm onto the beach. We sat on a large piece of driftwood, unfurled our warm sleeping bags, and just stared at the large disk in the sky.
What a fucking moon. It had a beautiful yellowish hue. And its moonbeams illuminated tiny shorebirds skittering all over the sand. I had my DSLR with me, but I didn’t even bother to take a shot. I was just sitting there taking it all in. It started getting windy so we decided to start walking down the beach at low tide. Sandpipers, gulls, and plovers were everywhere and the dog was jumping at each crustacean carapace it found. We also stumbled across 20-30 sand dollars lying about. Without the crowds of beachcombing visitors and the slowdown of the tourism industry, the beach looked so pristine. Back in its natural state.
I’ve previously written about how hard it’s been for me to slow down. It’s incredibly strange that I find it this difficult in our new COVID-19 world where our society is essentially at a standstill. But somehow, I was able to slow down here at Pacific Beach. I wasn’t thinking about the next thing to do or what awaited me once we entered the car and headed back to the city. I was just there.
I miss that feeling. I’m going to keep finding ways to slow down as more and more of our outdoors are opened up.