THE GNOME PROJECT

The tide was on its way in, slow and steady, the water folding over itself across the wide bay as it reached farther and farther up the beach — a familiar back and forth.

Kimo walked down from the path through the pine trees and stopped near the big driftwood log that had been sitting at the high-water mark for as long as anyone could remember. 

It had washed in from a storm years ago — three feet wide at the base, its roots towering overhead, cleaned of soil and weathered gray from years of sun and surf. The shape of it always reminded him of a great creature stretching after a long sleep. 

Every few winters a storm pushed it a few hundred feet one way or the other, but it always came to rest in this same stretch of beach.

Paddling from north to south, the bay would take nearly twenty minutes to cross — a long sweep of sand on a coastline mostly made of rock. 

The beach was soft underfoot and open to the horizon, a good place to watch the sun drop into the water. Tree-covered hills wrapped around the bay, making it feel private, tucked away — a well-kept secret.

Out toward the middle of the bay, the small island of rock stood dark against the pale grey water. At high tide only its crown would show, but now, with the tide at its lowest, it rose taller, presenting a profile that would soon disappear again. 

The beach stretched nearly two hundred yards closer to it at low tide — close enough, it seemed, to throw a rock and scatter the gulls and cormorants going about their business there.

He could tell where the waves would soon be breaking by the gentle roll and rise of the exposed sand, visible now at this lowest point of tide. 

The beach wasn’t flat; it lifted and dipped in subtle ways that would shape the water once the energy from the storm reached it. Small peaks rose at the higher spots growing into waves as the rest of the sandy bottom caught up. 

The lower dips, on the other hand, gathered the water into slow, steady returns — rivers within the water, carrying a predictable current that could ease one back out through the surf.

A storm a thousand miles away had stirred the sea days ago, and the energy it created was only now arriving — carried through the water like current through a copper wire. 

Offshore, thirty miles out, it showed itself as a slow lift and fall of the surface, nothing dramatic. Yet when that energy finally met the ocean floor — here, for example, on this beach — it rose according to the shape of the sand, forming the waves that some loved to ride and others liked to play in, or simply watch and appreciate.

Either way, it was in being part of all this that Kimo felt most at home.

He set his board down and watched as the light skipped across the water’s surface — patches of silver, green, and blue shifting with the slight offshore breeze slowly building. The air smelled of salt and dry seaweed. 

Down the beach, a few gulls picked through the kelp line, their calls cutting through the soft crash of water on sand.

He never needed waves to make it worth being there. The slow, steady rhythm between the ocean and the shore — the sounds, the smells, the salt in the air — was enough, a comfort. 

The tides and seasons continued on as they always have, no matter what goes on further inland. This was like being in the presence of an old friend — one you can always count on to be there, wherever you might find yourself.