DUNGENESS WILDLIFE AREA, SEQUIM, WA:
The gate at the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge opened at 6 AM, but the day had already been unfolding long before that. I drove under the pre-dawn sky, windows down, letting in the chill on the last mile of my drive. Most of my hikes begin with a longer drive through sleeping towns and empty highways. This one started the day prior, somewhere between home and watching the sunset over the same stretch of water I’d walk beside today. By the time I reached the spit, waves were crashing on one side, and the first golden rays landed on the other, illuminating the sand, rock, and driftwood as far as the eye could see on one of the longest spits in the world. There was nowhere to hide, no switchbacks, no tree cover, and no elevation to distract me. Just me and my trail-thought. Between watching sanderlings sprint the wave line and stopping to admire an eagle resting quietly on driftwood, my thoughts first reflected on the gratitude I felt during my drive; the idea of change, and how much of my life has been shaped by stepping outside routines that once felt permanent. Winter had locked so many trails away that simply having access felt deeply personal.
What surprised me most was not where my mind wandered, but how calmly it stayed there once it arrived. There were moments out on the spit where memory, coincidence, grief, and love all started occupying the same space without consulting logic first. A sign near the lighthouse pointing one direction toward Serenity, and the other back toward Reality, ended up landing more relevant than it probably intended to. I found myself revisiting moments that defy clean explanations, the kind of experiences I usually reserved for my own mind rather than spoken out loud. The strange part was that the tides seemed to understand the tension better than I did. Every wave rolled in, collapsed, disappeared, and returned again without needing to explain itself. Somewhere out there on that seemingly endless strip of sand, I stopped feeling responsible for solving every mystery that still lingered.
The walk back carried a different kind of weight, lighter somehow, even with tired legs and miles still ahead of me. Eagles circled over a sea lion carcass, and farther down the beach, families slowly began filling the shoreline, their voices replacing the solitude that had shaped the morning hours. I remember standing still at one point with my eyes closed, listening carefully to a single wave travel from a low distant rumble into silence, and realizing how long it had been since I let myself simply experience something without immediately trying to define it. By the time I was on the Primitive Trail with its lush, green canopy filled with birdsong, I knew the hike had given me more than just eleven miles of sand. There was something else waiting inside the questions I carried home with me, and I had a feeling the trail wasn’t finished revealing it yet.
The Journey…
I was already at the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge when the gate opened at 6 AM. Clear skies, 38 degrees, with my windbreaker on, knowing I’d probably shed it by mid-morning. The birds were already awake in the trees that lined the descent toward Dungeness Spit, and as I paused at a lookout, waves crashed along the west side while the calmer eastern shoreline caught the first warm light of the morning. The spit stretches five miles out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the eighth longest spit in the world, barely above sea level the entire way, Olympic Mountains at my back, water on both sides, and nothing between me and the lighthouse but sand, rock, and whatever the tide decided to leave behind.
For the first couple miles I was still carrying the pace of the morning, feet a little rushed, dancing along the wave line and stepping out of reach when the water made a run at me. Eventually things started to slow down the way they’re supposed to. An eagle glided by at one point and landed quietly on a piece of driftwood, and I stood there as long as it would allow. Growing up, eagles always seemed to be presented as symbols of strength and dominance, but watching one just bask in the early sun, I noticed something softer. I found a crab struggling on the beach not long after, picked him up, threw him back into the sound. Don’t know if it helped, but it felt like the right call. The sanderlings were running the wave line in groups of what looked like a hundred, chasing the surf out and sprinting back before it could catch them, over and over. Every mile I walked felt both repetitive and somehow entirely new at the same time. By the time I reached the lighthouse five miles out, the tide had pulled back enough to expose wide stretches of firm dark sand and pockets of rock pools. I sat on a driftwood bench next to a directional sign that read “Welcome to Serenity,” and another pointing back the way I came, “Reality, 5 miles.” New Dungeness Light Station, first lit in 1857, is one of the oldest lighthouses in the Pacific Northwest, and is still in operation, thanks to rotating lighthouse keepers. Two men raised a flag on the property and waved in my direction. There was something quietly comforting about human life existing way out there at the end of the spit.
On the return I came across eight eagles, adults and juveniles both, tearing into a sea lion carcass along the trail, beautiful and brutal at the same time. A little further on, a Black Oystercatcher with his dark body and long blade-like beak the color of a neon traffic cone let me get close before pattering off, calling out in a high sharp pitch like he was making some kind of point. About halfway back I stopped walking, faced the water, and closed my eyes. I listened carefully to an entire single wave, start to finish, deep bass rolling in from the left, climbing in pitch as it passed, then thinning out into nothing. By the time I neared the trailhead around noon, families and kids had started filling the beach, replacing the solitude of the early morning with laughter and voices carried on the breeze, and I didn’t mind it at all. After eleven miles of sand, rock, and sea air, I felt calmer than when I started. I took the Primitive Trail on the way back up, a beautifully landscaped path, lush and green; it was soft underfoot providing a gentle landing for my weary feet. The birds were still singing as I ascended back to the trailhead. I’m not sure they ever stopped.
Gratitude…
With headlights quietly negotiating the darkness, I pulled into Dungeness before 6 AM. It felt like I got away with something, sitting there in the stillness, knowing the bulk of the drive was already done. I don’t usually share the road. I mean, I’m not holding it to myself, just not a lot of takers before sunrise. Typically, my drives start in the pre-dawn darkness, with the rest of the world in my rearview mirror. But this waypoint was different. I drove to the peninsula the day prior, stopping for a quick bite in Silverdale and then windows down somewhere past the Hood Canal bridge, perplexed how a black cloud can co-exist with blue sky. I watched weekend travelers along the way, each chasing their own destinations. I stopped for a pint and bucket of peanuts at a local taproom, then dropped by Dungeness Spit just in time to catch the sunset and get a sense what lay ahead on the opposite horizon, a mere nine hours away. It wasn’t my usual ritual, but I’ve learned not to be sentimental about routines. Change has a way of arriving dressed like inconvenience, a place where most new experiences exist.
By the time I settled in for the night, I realized how much I enjoyed breaking my normal rhythm, which was odd, given that I like patterns and structure, only to blow them up. I started to consider that maybe I’m more like a pinsetter in a bowling alley, setting them up perfectly, just to knock them down again. Change has always ignited something in me, demanding that next learning, which may explain why I’m always curious about life, wondering if there’s another version of it that feels even more alive, more meaningful, more connected. Embracing change has worked for me; it keeps the edges from getting dull and fuels that constant, quiet question in the back of my mind about how to squeeze a little more joy out of this existence. Lately, my reflections have been fixed on the turning of the seasons, specifically the transition into another beautiful Pacific Northwest spring. For much of my life, spring was just that brief, bright window of energy wedged between the hibernation of winter and the air-conditioned retreat of deep summer. It was a welcome relief from the gray, sure, but I never considered what else it could mean until recently.
This year, I’m looking through a different lens, one with more range. When I began hiking just over a year ago, each trail unfolded as a new adventure, untouched by any prior experience or expectation. Then winter hit. I watched mountain passes lock down, trails flood, and high country become a no-go zone fraught with avalanche warnings. For a few weeks, I retreated to the safety of urban hikes, adventures in their own right. I never fully realized how much I took the dirt for granted until the land closed its doors for months on end. Pausing there in the dark, waiting for the first light to hit Dungeness, I realized my gratitude for spring this year wasn’t just about new growth, lush green landscapes, or the sun breaking through the clouds. It was about access. The gates are unlocking, the snow is retreating, and places that were completely off-limits are finally opening up again. I didn’t let my dauber down from the forced patience over the last few months, but it did sharpen my anticipation for what was ahead.
Reflections…
The sand was still cold when I stepped onto Dungeness Spit, setting me off on miles of narrow, flat earth reaching into the water, as far I as I could see. Starting at sunrise meant I’d hit the very end of the point at low tide, a necessary calculation for a ten-mile out-and-back with the Puget Sound pressing in from both sides. There were no elevation gains today, no switchbacks, and no trees to tuck behind, which got me thinking about the lack of privacy for relieving myself. Just ten miles of open sand and whatever I was carrying in my head. Walking a path this exposed left me nowhere to hide from my thoughts, and before long, my trail-thought surfaced again naturally, almost like it had been waiting for the silence: What actually defines reality? Is it something that exists outside of me, objective and indifferent, or does it take shape from the inside, from the meaning I assign to things, the beliefs I carry, and the love I hold on to.
With each step, I found myself circling back to memories of Kelly, before and after her passing. Those curious moments felt too vivid to ignore, too charged to dismiss. I thought about the final note of Joshua Radin’s cover of “Three Little Birds,” hanging in her she-shed just as she took her last breath. Even now, I can still hear the timing of it with uncomfortable clarity, it was 3:20 on July 15, 2024. Then my mind wandered to her Celebration of Life, in the clubhouse at Brown’s Point when that sudden storm rolled hard across the Puget Sound out of nowhere, perfectly timed, whitecaps appearing almost instantly, tables scraping sideways, doors slamming open and shut while everyone scrambled for a few chaotic minutes before it disappeared as quickly as it came. At the time, people laughed nervously and attributed it Kelly making an entrance, signaling her approval or mischief, depending on who was talking. Walking along that seemingly endless strip of sand this morning, I allowed myself to sit in that tension, neither hurried nor anxious to resolve it, because some part of me never fully decided what it meant. It was a strange comfort. Something I chose to believe because it felt right.
By the time I reached the lighthouse at the spit’s end, the tide had pushed farther out and the wet sand had turned darker and firmer beneath my feet. The walking became easier there, almost effortless, and my mind slipped into that quiet rhythm where thoughts stop feeling like work. I then remembered driving toward the Palisades Trail a little over a year ago on Mother’s Day, nervous about the elevation of the climb in front of me, when Sinéad O’Connor’s voice, on shuffle, filled the car singing, “Climb until your legs are weary / Climb until your heart grows numb / Climb because you love me dearly.” I remember gripping the steering wheel tighter because it felt too specific to ignore, a tear appeared, maybe a few. And, even just a few months ago, I walked out of my master bath to find a vase of white tulips sitting on the floor right beside my bed while the room stayed perfectly still. No open windows. No pets. No explanation I could make fit into a clean narrative. It just sat there on the floor, a quiet mystery that demanded my attention. Has grief simply sharpened my mind toward patterns and meaning, or has love gifted me with something that continued to move through the universe in ways I barely understood?
Somewhere on the walk back, I stopped trying so hard to separate those possibilities into categories that made sense. I understood the logic behind confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. The human brain filters about 11 million bits of sensory information per second down to 40 or 50, holding on tighter to what matters, to what makes sense of the world from our lens. I knew that. But the longer I walked with the waves crashing on the shoreline around me, the less interested I became in proving anything one way or the other. The question itself softened. What mattered wasn’t whether Kelly was somehow controlling weather patterns or slipping songs into perfectly-timed moments from somewhere beyond my understanding. What mattered was recognizing how deeply she still existed inside the structure of my life, shaping the way I moved through the world. That influence was real regardless of where it came from. Maybe reality wasn’t as clean as I wanted it to be.
The return hike felt lighter even though the distance hadn’t changed. The sun had climbed higher by then, turning the water brighter, and there were other souls farther down the shoreline who looked small against the endless stretch of rock and sand. My legs burned a little, but it felt grounding, familiar. I remember the calmness I felt once I stopped trying to solve the mystery behind every meaningful moment. Love never fit neatly into logic for me anyway, and neither does grief. They linger quietly and keep reshaping things long after the physical evidence and visible parts existed. Whatever those moments were, coincidence or something entirely different, they still carry weight because of what they awaken inside me. They allowed me to remember Kelly with warmth in lieu of absence. By the time the trailhead came back into view, I hadn’t arrived at an answer, but I no longer felt like I needed one, and that turned out to be enough. The path continues.
-Ken
- Dungeness Wildlife Area, Sequim, WA
- 48° 8′ 28.824″ -123.19044″
- Saturday Evening: 3.6 miles | 144 ft elevation gain | ~2 hours
- Sunday Morning: 11.4 miles | 144 ft elevation gain | ~5 hours
- Sunrise: 5:30 AM, 38-47 degrees, clear
Musings 