Comes the autumn, comes the winter, comes the drizzle and rain that is the Oregon coast. Through the overcast, comes once in a while, a day the locals say is why they endure life here. The sun exposed it’s glory this Saturday past. Such was the day that only a walk along the Pacific shoreline would satisfy.

The narrow path, a carpet of fallen pine needles, a lining of fern and Darlingtonia, known only to locals and the occasional fortunate tourist. At trails’ end I stood in that familiar awe, the unrelenting beauty of God’s nature spread before me. How blessed I was to walk beneath a sky more blue than the eyes of the prettiest girl in Wisconsin.

How blessed I was to be surrounded by a majesty I could freely embrace but never hold. A majesty stored within the pixels of memory, recalled another evening, near a warm fire, a then current storm heavy with the raindrops that make things beautiful. Nothing lay before me but miles of naked, abandoned coastline. How blessed.

A solitary path of footprints grew longer behind me. In these rare moments of solitude, these rare moments of escape, my mind free to ponder a multitude of realities. The mortgage, insurance premiums, what measures to vote for next week, who to vote for next week, is this the last of the broccoli in the garden, will there be another beautiful day to groom the dogs, will a ton of pellets be enough for this winter, will Florida beat Georgia this afternoon, what’s for dinner.

But those real thoughts were for another time, my mind waxing philosophical. What power there is in apology. What strength stands beside such humility. Is it pride that holds a person from admitting a wrong, an injustice? Is it a fear of appearing weak, a sliver of control relinquished, worse yet, human?

I made my way back stretching my gait to step where I had stepped before. I thought of an old poem, “The Psalm of Life”, by Longfellow I think. “Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime. And, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time. Footprints that perhaps another, sailing o’er life’s solemn main. A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, seeing shall take heart again”

I mumbled those words along the trail back to my world. It came to me, then, that this ugliness of Blogstream could have resolved so easily with an apology. Through all my words I was searching only for an apology for a written untruth, a hurtful and demeaning unkindness.

I was told to forget it, I was told to move on. But they were the untouched, they could not grasp the hurt.

The unquestioning love of two little dogs met me at the gate. I petted their happy heads and thought of what had happened during my walk. My solitude, my reasons to feel so blessed, had been invaded by these goings-on. My real life had once invaded Blogstream; now Blogstream had invaded my real life.

The dogs and the cats and my life have missed me as I whiled away in front of this computer. Perhaps the time had come to step back, to take better measure of my life, to end my vigil for an apology never coming. To find solitude, to feel peace.