Mukilteo Beach

Over by the dock where the ferry leave for Whidbey island is the Mukilteo Beach. It is a small, mostly rocky beach with lots of driftwood that has washed up along the shore. This makes it a great place to explore patterns and shapes that combine the organic with the mineral.

I always find it fascinating to find a log that is polished smooth and shiny lying next to one that is rough and weathered raw. The foreground log reminds me of a whale that has surfaced and is rolling over with a flipper in the air.

In other places we find lichens growing on the wood that display a variety of colors. Bright yellow is a color that unexpected on an old piece of wood. Here, lying next to the blue-greens and the browns, it stand out as a statement...a kind of "look at me!". I enjoy the way the swirls of the lichen follows the grain of the wood. This play of color and shape give this an abstract, painterly feel.

This is one of my favorites from this outing. The shape and lighting of this portion of a log, evokes that of a wave rising out of the water just before it comes crashing down. Only here it is permanently (?) frozen in time. The side lighting adds to the illusion. Even the slightly rusty colored lichen, growing in lots of small dots as if it were foam on the sea, completes the image.

Just as we are all trapped on this world, some things (and some people) are more defined by the imprisonment that others. Quite how this stone managed to get trapped between portions of the tree and then become ingrown is unclear. yet, it survived the life and death of the tree and came along for the sea voyage to this bech. And here it lies. While the entire world around it changed in a myriad of ways, the local environment never changed. This may be the best security we can hope for in this life.