Today, John and I went hiking on the Nisqually Delta, where the Nisqually River runs into the Puget Sound. This is a hike that my parents have taken and I recall my dad telling me about it.

It is muddy. The water is brackish. It is winter in Western Washington. The ground and the plants are dark. The sky is changeable from grays to white to peeks of blue.

This is a popular area. We see many people, mostly families with kids and gray-haired married couples. The trail is flat and wide. There are short and medium length trails. It is perfect for the young and the old. I see my past as a child learning to hike, as a mother teaching her daughter to hike, and hopefully, my future, continuing to hike with my beloved husband for many years to come.

It seems like an in-between world, between solid and liquid, earth and sky, salt and freshwater, youth and old age. I see death, in the silver tree snags that stick out from the mud. These trees will never get leaves again. I see dormancy in the live but leafless trees on the shore and in the brown bushes in and around the water.

I also, of course, notice a lot of life, when I get quiet and still. There are so many birds. Honking geese, so many kinds of ducks, gulls, waders, and those little bitty beach birds that scurry along the shore like mice when they are not flying in tight formation just over the water’s surface. Every once in awhile, I hear a frog, sounding like a cross between an animal and a one-stringed musical instrument.

Every life is in-between. It is in some moments that we are fully aware of this. Today, I see it. I hear it. I feel it. It is poignant, hopeful, sad, and sweet.

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