The sea stack rose from the surf like some eternally slumbering creature, its back covered in a distant, misty, wind-swept forest, while on the beach hundreds of massive driftwood trunks baked in the sun and giant stone teeth revealed to us an impermanent tidal universe, a home for barnacles and urchins, and the stranding of teardrop jellyfish on the spongy wet sand. Today was our annual road trip tradition which involved an eight-hour drive around the Olympic Peninsula, egg salad on the beach, a sweaty hike in the rainforest, dinner at Lake Crescent with the world’s greatest dessert and a frantic rush Eastward through the darkness to catch the last ferry back home.