• Dan Cloak Home
• Dan Cloak Environmental Consulting
• Adventures
• 2007:
  Best Management Practices
• 2006:
  Watershed Event
• 2005:
  I Hit the Jackpot!
• 2005:
  Chloride City
• 2004:
  Get Out the Vote
• 2004:
  Over the Top … or not
• 2004:
  No. 8 Wire
• 2004:
  Trampers
• 2004:
  Dark Carnival
• 2003:
  A Walk to Nowhere
• 2003:
  Beach Idyll
• 2003:
  Tall Trees
• 2003:
  Dead Horse Canyon
• 2003:
  Slippery Slope
• 2002:
  'frayed
• 2002:
  Rae Lakes Loop
• 2001:
  The Grand Adventure
• 2000:
  San Juan Islands
• 1999:
  The Bear Story
• About this site

(“Idyll” has two definitions. It may refer to an episode or experience, or it can mean a short poem or prose piece. Our experiences create our narratives—and vice versa.)

Our beach idyll was created by planning and by serendipity. One day some months ago, I was browsing the tide tables— you have to have done that to know why—and I noticed a predicted extreme low tide at sunset on a Sunday.

That was the planning part.

Serendipity was a warm, windless day. Serendipity was the availability of friends, including two who would share with us their youthful delight  at each discovery.

Serendipity was having no last-minute responsibilities or other things going wrong. Nothing interfered with our arrival at the beach at the precise time the tide was going out.

We walked more than an hour along the broad, freshly exposed beach until we reached the rocky coves and tidepools. We gaped at the abundance of sea anenomes and starfish and mussels. We clambered through the tunnels and splashed among the slippery rocks.

The sun set, and we walked back in the warm near-darkness. There was no breeze. The crescent moon, bathed in red, hung long on the horizon before it too sunk into the sea.