I'd arranged to be alone on Xmas. It's not my favorite holiday. But then I heard from Abby. She was wanting to be alone too. I thought we'd be good at being alone together. We went for a great long walk with the dog. It was beautifully sunny and warm. Through the woods for a couple of miles until we came out onto a high bluff over-looking the Atlantic. I peered over the edge and thought oh good lord, but Abby spied a few steps to get us started and we found our way down the sixty-or-eighty feet drop to the beach. The beginning of the descent, zig-zagging through scrubby pines, reminded me of the girl in Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristess, who made similar walks from her widowed father's vacation house to the beach in the south of France. I first read that novel in Indiana in 1958 when I had not yet seen the ocean; today that girl's walks are more vivid to me.
Walking north toward Newcomb Hollow we came upon the skeleton of a late-1800's shipwreck that had washed ashore late last January but which then was pretty much buried under sand over the summer and autumn. It must have become re-exposed during last weekend's high-wind storms.
Whatever. It was a great walk. Thanks Abby. Thanks Jodie. Good Christmas.
