cocooned

I’ve been craving the feeling of being out in the woods, the trees close and the mountains large. I’ve been getting by with city nature escapes on bike rides and, more recently due to a back injury flare, only walks. Today though, I found out that I can sit by a river with an umbrella around me huddled up with someone I love holding a second umbrella and still experience nature. In my defense, when I originally looked at the weather today was supposed to be rain free and the morning deceived me with glimmers of sun. I brought the umbrella as a “just in case” rather than as a requirement and I’m relieved I did. We brought hot tea made at home in my YETI bottle with two tiny cups and a camping stove to heat up minestrone soup from the store with a loaf of bread to rip into. It was a mess and it was perfect.

It rained hard when we first got to Champion Beach so we huddled our chairs close together, had our umbrellas do the same, and laughed hard. It felt like a portlandia episode for a day at the beach in the PNW. Eventually, I pulled out my hammock, wrapped it around our umbrellas, and clipped in either side to our chairs. We cocooned and leaned back our umbrella contraption to sneak bigger and bigger glances of the world around. After a while though, the rain slowed to a halt. We scrambled to heat up our soup and soak in the views, until we settled into the pause in the weather. The fog quickly danced around the mountains allowing more and more of them to be seen.

I hope to do it all again just maybe with our rain pants on next time.