Beyond the gate, a dirt road disappeared down the bluff On our right, a red-shingled bungalow clung to the cliff edge. High on the crest of the bluff behind us, a larger house showed white siding and bright blue window trim. Below it, on a level with the wide turnout provided for vehicles pulling trailers and boats, an ancient garage had collapsed onto a rusting pickup truck. Power lines and TV antennas serviced both houses.

The view below was an infinite jigsaw puzzle: Gray ocean meshed with gray sky, there was no horizon. Two large islands abutted the southern headland with mud-tan borders and apple- green centers. Out beyond extended the wide lower estuary, streaked with brown, green, and gray tidal currents. Across the river’s mouth a half-mile or so away and shielded by strands of fog drifting slowly inland, loomed the northern headland. On its crest, barely visible, were the tiny white buildings, towers, and discs of the Requa Radar Station: An U.S. Airforce Base perched on a ledge 1000 feet above the ocean, like a hidden eagle’s aerie.

I rolled the window down, leaned out, rubbed my cheek. My hand felt chill, wet. Overhead, seabirds screamed. Below, breakers broke against the rocks. Dense, deformed vegetation coated the crest of the bluff.

My earlier responses to Patrick’s Point Park and the Memorial Redwoods with their silent and shaded grandeur evaporated. Even their aura of safety and protection was gone. Here, in stark contrast, were turbulence and exposure and no place to hide. And hiding was what I had been doing for way too long.

I was a lonely woman in my middle years who, for whatever reasons, saw a major chunk of my life as a parenthesis - the sequence which interrupts the construction, without otherwise affecting it. Something had to prod me into reaction, into action. Something did.

There was one other landform below, the memorable, the motivating one—and in the end, the catalyst for the mother whose four kids were almost grown, whose marriage was already over.

It was a long finger of sand anchored sturdily onto the headland below, which, on pointing northwest, thinned and became straight-edged. If phallic, it was an erection. There were none of those sensuous, curving bays and inlets I would see on my later visits. Instead, on that first day, the Sandspit, which is never in the same place from year to year, was plain in outline, extended in feeling. It was a reaching out, an effort to bridge something within. It was both contradiction and dichotomy, and the essence of all that awaited me.