The damp timbers creaked under her feet as she wondered if the fog would lift. She half-hoped it would not.
She was still small and timorous when her uncle had brought her here for the first time. “And you won’t be disappointed,” he had laughed, the lines about his eyes creasing in merriment.
It was only later that she understood his joke. It still made her smile.
Indeed, she loved Cape Disappointment. Even in the fog. Perhaps especially in the fog, in its unique magic. She’d read that almost a third of a year’s hours are spent in fog on the headland, masking rivers, hugging sand.
A gust of wind dripped cold into her collar and she laughed. Her uncle used to shake a branch onto her. This felt like a gift.
“You were right, Uncle,” she wiped a tear. “This place did not disappoint. Neither did you. Not once.”
For What Pegman Saw: Cape Disappointment, Washington, USA
And neither have you!
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Awwwww!!! 🙂 XOXO
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A celebration of a special place, and of a relationship, me thinks.
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Yes indeed! Me thinks, too! 🙂
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Oh, you virtuoso! To reiterate ‘disappoint’; to set your story in the fog and the cold and the damp; and to make it a powerful feel-good experience even so. Kudos, Na’ama!
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🙂 YAY! What lovely praise, thank you Penny! I’m humbled.
Sometimes the smallest moments go the deepest, don’t they? 🙂
THANKS!
Na’ama
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What a beautifully done story, Na’ama!
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Thank you, my friend! Sometimes one needs a village. 🙂
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Truth.
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🙂 Me love truths.
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🙂
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You paint such a deeply felt atmosphere here, and it weaves in with her emotions so perfectly: nicely done! I especially like the detail of her uncle shaking a branch onto her.
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Thanks, Joy!
I’m so glad the atmosphere got communicated! 🙂
Thanks for reading and for this lovely comment, too!
Na’ama
PS I don’t think I’d have appreciated that cold branch-water-bath … 😉 But it IS all about the association, isn’t it? 🙂
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Yes exactly, it’s all about the association. And the positive context in which it was described made it sound like something she liked — maybe a cooling-off on hot days.
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And perhaps the ether-like reality of cloud-forests and rain-forests and the unearthly realities of mist and fog. I find them to be strangely intoxicating or at the very least, mind-altering in a prehistoric kind of way that maybe my DNA senses even if my brain does not know … 😉
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Ooh, I love the way you put that, yes! Mist and fog are so magical. Makes me want to go to Scotland and get lost on the moors….
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Yes! I’m all for going to Scotland!!! (A little less excited about getting lost on the moors … 😉 )
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True. I’m really thinking more “quasi-lost in a romantic historical novel sense.” 🙂
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Whew. OK, that I can do … 😉
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😀
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🙂
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So bittersweet and lovely. No disappointment here!
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I’m so glad you enjoyed this! And … doubly glad there was no disappointment there. … 🙂
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Great story. I agree entirely with it. We went there last summer. Everyone in the family said it was their favorite place.
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I’m so glad you liked the story!
I haven’t myself been to that part of fantastic yet, but I hope to be soon. What I have been to, which perhaps has some of the same ‘feel’ are Maine beaches in the fog, and a cloud forest in the mountains of Thailand last summer, and the feel of it has a sense all its own. It could almost be a different planet and perhaps it is …
Now I wanna fly across the country to visit Cape Disappointment, which I KNOW would not disappoint!
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As others have said, a lovely story filled with emotion and happy sentiment. Well done 🙂
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Thank you, Lynn! 🙂 For this weekend in the US, where so many celebrate Fathers’ Day, I thought to highlight the many different kind of fathering there is, and how meaningful such connections can be. I’m glad it came across! 🙂
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My pleasure 🙂
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🙂
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I live in the Pacific Northwest. Bellingham, WA, just below the Canadian border. You captured the love I feel for this area. Some of my favorite days are filled with fog. I love the relationship between the uncle and the woman through time. The memories.
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Thank you, Alicia! I’m so happy I was able to capture this — I’ve never been to the Pacific Northwest (well, when I have, it was for a conference and back to the East Coast with only the promise of another trip where I’d be able to actually visit!), so my mist-muse is based on fog on the beach in Maine and the cloud-forest in the mountains of Chiang Mai.
And, yes, I love fog, too. There is a mystery and connection in it that reminds me that all water molecules have once been all of us … and again, and again, through the miracles of time.
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