Don't worry, I'm not going to launch into a story about how babies are made. I'll leave that to your parents. The title just summed up so perfectly our camping trip a few days ago that consisted of both lots of birds and lots of bees -- birds that were sweet, soaring through the air, minding their own business and bees that were angry, pissed off, ambushers swarming out of nowhere (or perhaps from their hive that we might have accidentally stepped on) to attack us.
But let me take a few steps back and start at the beginning. Last Thursday Drew and I decided to head out of town for a night, get ourselves some fresh Pacific Northwest air, recharge our batteries. We still have pretty much no idea what lies beyond our little world here in Seattle so we got in the car (for the first time in 3 weeks), pointed to the atlas and said "let's go there!" And so we did. We ended up a little less than 2 hours away at Deception Pass State Park. It was a lovely drive, the fall colors magnified by the gray and the mist, curvy roads cutting through hills and valleys like something out of a James Bond movie, except instead of a souped up sports car we're driving a 12 year old Acura with 230,000 miles on it.
You never really know what to expect from state parks. It seems like most of the time they're on different ends of the spectrum, either you're crammed into a parking lot with a couple trees or it's a truly unique place that people have worked hard to preserve. Luckily we fell upon the latter. Deception Pass is incredibly beautiful, almost in a haunting sort of way, with the rugged cliffs, old-growth forests, a damp chill that hangs in the air. Later I read that because of the area's temperate climate, an abundance of different species of birds winter there. I figured it had to be something like that since I've never in my life seen so many birds in one place. Drew said the only other place where he'd seen anything close was canoeing on the Yampa river in Wyoming a few years back. They were everywhere, hundreds of them, gliding over the water looking for food, clustered together like an army on the rocks & shore killing time between flights. They seemed to own the whole area, leaving the humans to just sit back and enjoy the show.
It's a uniquely alluring place, Deception Pass State Park. The mix of birds, cool misty weather, lush abundant forests and the lack of other people at the campground made our presence there feel almost insignificant. We'd spent the three weeks prior in our apartment overlooking the skyscrapers of downtown Seattle, hearing the constant drone of highway traffic. Living in a city, there's an awareness that the rhythms of nature have been replaced by those of people, something that has its own kind of beauty and sense of order. But the natural world is different. There are unspoken rules and hierarchies understood only by those living there and if you, the tourist, happen to be hiking along unaware of your surroundings, well, nature will give you a not so gentle reminder of who's boss.
We were only about three minutes into our hike, talking about how "great it was that we fell upon this park and isn't it just amazing", when all of a sudden I hear Drew yell from behind me, "BEES! SHIT! RUN!" and out of nowhere we were ambushed by over 50 bees. Before I could even think I felt one sting my elbow and could see them swarming around my head. That's all it took and I was off with Drew just a few steps behind, running at full speed down the trail screaming. It just seemed like the natural reaction to scream, like something my 4 year old niece would do. I have to be honest and say that I was definitely a little freaked out. I like to think of myself as calm, cool, collected but stick 50 bees on me and I am none of the above. I am the opposite of the above. I ended up with four bites that turned into quarter size welts and Drew ended up with a bite on his ear, which in turn made one ear swell up to almost twice the size of the other. That was actually a little funny. But I must say I was quite glad that A) neither of us were allergic to bees because that wouldn't have been the start to the relaxing getaway we were going for and B) that it wasn't summer and we weren't in t-shirts and shorts because, well, that would've just straight up sucked really bad.
So we survived. Though we did take the road for the rest of the hike to the beach. After sitting on the beach and watching the birds for a while we ventured back into the forest and made our way down to the north beach, about a half mile away. I made Drew walk ahead of me this time, not that that would've really done anything if we got swarmed again but it made me feel somewhat protected. Husbands are good for that sometimes.
The north beach was deserted, no one there but the two of us and a beach full of rocks and driftwood. So we skipped rocks for a while, watched boats make their way to Puget Sound, some of the coolest looking boats I've seen, I might add. I've been used to lake boats in the midwest but these were "real" boats, boats that can survive out in the ocean with high sides to block the waves. Some looked like cool versions of tug boats and others like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean with lots of sails and flair and personality.
In the midst of our rock skipping and boat watching, Drew suddenly looked at me perplexed and said, "I swear I just saw a dog in the water." We both stopped and looked out at the water wondering who's dog it would be since the beach was empty when all of a sudden a seal poked it's head out of the water about 6 feet from us. The only time I'd seen seals was in San Francisco where there were hundreds of them hanging out on the docks with just as many people standing around staring at them while they barked like dogs and clumsily tried to move around out of the water. There and at the zoo. Both experiences seemed strange and slightly unsettling to me. But I swear this seal was playing with us. We'd run down the beach and stop and look around and wonder where it went when all of a sudden it would appear again gliding through the water just a few feet out from shore. This went on for a while, running, stopping, looking around, suddenly his head pops up and so on. Before I knew it I had run almost the whole length of the beach, feeling like I was 4 years old again.
As we walked along the beach back to our campsite we were laughing about how different this getaway was turning out from what we had envisioned. Getting attacked by bees was not part of the vision, nor was sitting on the shore with hundreds of birds soaring overhead or watching a seal play in the water. It was perfect. Sort of like our whole experience thus far in the Pacific Northwest. When we moved here we had no idea what to expect nor what we really needed, but each day always brings some brand new adventure. And as cliche as that sounds, and I know it does, it's true. The one part of our vision that is exactly as we expected is that life feels exciting now and the unknown is the one thing we can count on.
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