Thursday, February 4, 2010

Hiking to Columbier Beach


Just over three years ago, David and I went to a beautiful, magical island in the Caribbean--St. Barts--with our close friends Mark and Sarah Metherell. It was the first and only time we took a vacation with them alone--just the two of them with the two of us. It was an absolutely perfect week, and a time that I will never, never forget. We miss Mark terribly. As many of you know, he was killed in Iraq on April 11, 2008. Tomorrow, February 5 is Mark's birthday. He would have been 41 years old.


We parked our boxy
rental car and hiked into
a kind of Eden,
traveling up a rocky
path hemmed in by tall
grass, flowering plants, cacti.
Up up up we walked
for what felt like a very
long time, then crested
the hill. Catching sight of the
pale-gold sand and deep
blue water we greedily
scrambled down to the
beach. Shedding backpacks, shoes, and
sweaty t-shirts we
raced into the placid sea,
and laughed and laughed, for no reason other
than that somehow we four were
halfway around the world, swimming
off a floral-scented island
under a warm December sun.


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