Richmond Beach, April

Richmond Beach was Adalind's idea. She'd gone with her class in the fall and had been asking to go back. We went on Saturday afternoon — maybe 4 o'clock, sun still high enough, wind down enough to make it worth it.

The beach there is gray pebble and driftwood, Puget Sound spread out in front of you, the Olympics in the distance if the weather cooperates. It cooperated. There were ferries going across and a train went through on the tracks above the beach, which Adalind treated as an event.

Within about eight minutes of arriving, both of them had gravitated toward the largest driftwood pile and were building something. This was entirely self-organized — no plan, no discussion, just a collective decision that the logs needed to be arranged differently than they were. They built what I can only describe as an intentional structure. It had an entrance. There was some debate about the roof.

I sat on a piece of driftwood and watched the water. There's a particular kind of afternoon that belongs to the Pacific Northwest specifically — the light is doing something complicated, the air is cold but you're not uncomfortable, and you're outside in a way that feels real rather than performed. Saturday was that.

We stayed until the light started to go. The structure was left standing. Whoever was there on Sunday found something to work with.