Lessons on joy from Kalaloch Beach, Olympic National Park

and slow moments and feather kites are the teachers

Parked in our campground, the window on Mike’s side of the bed framed a view of Kalaloch Beach in Olympic National Park with sand bar waves rolling in that were good enough to surf. This famous location is a pristine stretch of Washington forever bounded by piles of perfectly formed, oblong stones, and littered with giant silvery dinosaur-bone driftwood.

Lying in bed, my head propped on a pillow so I could see the ocean, my visual frame was filled with waves sparkling with sunshine that we hadn’t seen in days of overcast weather. The camper resonated with the music of the sea, as if it were a very large shell held up to my ear. 

There was nowhere I would rather have been in all the world than right there, in that moment, and I was filled with a sweet and billowing joy that brought tears to my eyes.

A realization crystallized: To fully enter the present and occupy it with all of ourselves, at any given moment, was a choice given not only to me, but to each of us. Wonder and gratitude are the natural response to that kind of awareness, and they’re often followed by joy. 

Perhaps we could live in that uplifted state for longer and longer, maybe even forever. 

It’s possible in theory, at least.

When seeking joy, there is a free flow of acceptance of what is happening around and within you, fueled by a constant flow of gratitude. It can be like being plugged into a current and with energy flowing through you. Or, more peacefully, as if you floated on your back in a never ending stream, letting beautiful nature take you where it would.

In a state of joy, there’s a slowing of pace, a quieting of the mind, a cease of all striving. There’s plenty of time to notice things: to wonder over a folded leaf, track a fluttering butterfly, watch a worm raising the soil like a tiny gopher. Even when alone, you have a sense of being connected to everything around you; as if at last, one human has assumed her rightful place in the world: an animal being with a soul, moving through space and time; and just for just a little while, part of it all.

Joy is deeper than happiness. More organic, blind to being manipulated or drugged into existence, true joy rises like lava from magma, bubbling up and building without intention or goal. Bliss, when it strikes, is lightning, an amplification of joy that suffuses the body with tingling sensation and causes the eyes to well up, the heart to pound, one’s hair to stand on end… And swiftly, that passes, leaving in its wake profound contentment. 

There is no need to make sense of any of it and only a lingering wish remains: that more such moments might occur.

I am making a study of cultivating joy, and here are some ideas:

• Always take the scenic route

• Schedule extra time between activities: 15 to 30 minutes. Hurry is the thief of joy.

• Smile at people and see what happens

• Toss compliments around like confetti

• Have a hobby: something you do just for fun. Never try to turn your hobby into money: if you do, get a new, unrelated hobby.

• Get out in nature daily

• Play lots of music

• Have furry or feathered or scaly or sleek friends from the animal kingdom

• Most of all: notice how amazing nature is and how lucky we are to experience our place in it.

  

  Photo by Peter Conlan on Unsplash

A few days later…

There was sand in the sink, gritty against the bottom of the coffee mugs. Koa had tracked sand into the bed. Sand had formed actual piles in the corners of the black-and-white checkered floor of the rig. Sand was everywhere—and five days after arriving at Kalaloch Beach in Olympic National Park, I'd given up trying to chase the stuff around with a broom, when we went down to the beach three or four times a day. 

I’d been beachcombing (though it’s illegal to take anything away from the park) filling my pockets with crab molts, dried bits of seaweed gone transparent as if they were shed snakeskins, various feathers, and a graduating sized collection of the perfectly oblong sedimentary rocks that collected in rafts and banks, swept up the shingle by heavy tides twice a day. Playing with my finds, arranging and rearranging them on the picnic table outside the trailer, was deeply satisfying to my artist’s soul.

One day, seated there, I spotted Paul our campsite neighbor tossing a very unique kite made of seabird feathers into the air. The thing was tricky to launch—he kept making adjustments, aligning the vanes and smoothing the feathers’ barbules—but once aloft, the delicate feather kite flew beautifully.

The alignment of the kite’s feathers is critical to their function, Paul told me; the feathers must all be facing “front down” and be carefully connected, one spine fitted  into the other, and their joins held together at corners. The overall shape reminded me of a Japanese gate: feathers angled toward each other at the top, flared wider at the bottom, forming a rough square of connected vanes in the middle.

Paul gave me the kite when I admired it, a gift that felt staggering in the moment, so rare and precious was this ephemeral creation. It was made of smaller, less consistent feathers than his bigger one (“that one took me days to find four big wing feathers exactly the same size and length,” he told me) and the imbalances made mine a “stunt kite” that wanted to twirl and dip. It took over an hour of launching and adjusting, even adding a fishing line streamer tail, to get it to fly true…but when it did, I danced with joy like a kid, Koa leaping and flipping alongside me.

Flying my feather kite with joyful Koa

This was the kind of thing I most enjoyed at the beach: a search for just the right natural “found” materials, then a creative project to put them to use. 

Mike was working on something too: a large, hand-carved driftwood staff. While I pored and fiddled with my beach finds, he whittled the lightweight, weathered gray wood of his walking stick with scenes and symbols from our travels. 

We’d never forget our enchanted time on Kalaloch Beach with his staff, and my feather kite, to remind us.

P.S. If you resonated with this post, please hit the ❤️ and let me know what makes YOU joyful?