Alaska: June 27

You know those soundscape CDs that are supposed to help you sleep? The ones with birds chirping and waves rolling onto the seashore? I woke up this morning wondering if the people who create those have ever slept on a beach. I mean really slept on a beach – in a tent, with two dogs, dozens of feet from the incoming tide.
It’s not exactly peaceful. But it is fun.
We camped on the Homer Spit last night, pitching our tent in a long line of tents, trusting that night’s first homesteader to know just how close we could get without waking up in a house boat.
Once the freeze dried lasagna had been consumed and the hot cocoa was warming our hands, we sat upon a log and watched the tide begin to roll in. Then we climbed into the tent and tried to sleep. Keyword is tried here.
Though the hour was late (well after midnight), it was still light. For someone who has never suffered insomnia, I am now more compassionate towards those who do.
And though the rolling waves sang a lullaby for a while, they became a raucous drinking song the closer they came. They whooshed and crashed and whooped and slammed their beer steins on the table. Right around 3 in the morning, when the water was a stone’s throw from our tent, the waves started dancing and stomping, too. Whoosh, stomp, holler, swing your partner round and round. Whoosh, stomp, holler, swing your partner round and round.
I managed to doze through most of that revelry. It was the bar fight at about 3:30 that woke me up with my heart a racing. Tables were overturned. Chairs were slammed on the wooden floor. Everyone was yelling.
I felt surrounded. I felt like I’d pressed my ear against the biggest, loudest cone shell on earth. I could hear the ocean, and the ocean could hear me. I could feel the ocean’s crushing power and smell its life and salt and death. I felt like I was in the ocean and the ocean was in me.
And then, almost as quickly as the crashing and whooshing had begun, it receded. The ocean waves became a lullaby once again, and I slept in the real soundscape of ebb and flow, ebb and flow, ebb and flow in Alaska.