Down by the Sea

We camped in Malibu again this past weekend (photos of our first trip are here). It was cold. And windy. There were many more bugs. A wildebeest-like raccoon somehow figured out how to open our ice chest and ravage two of our meals in the middle of the night. In the loudest, most snarling, maybe-I'll rip-open-their-tent-and-eat-their-faces-off-too kind of way. The cold and restless ocean swallowed my camera (the iPhone survived). And Sabine spilled bubbles on my Blackberry, which is now seriously dysfunctional.

But we saw a handful of bunny rabbits with white cotton tails just outside our tent each morning. We met a flock of seagulls who had an enormous appetite for whole grain Goldfish. We climbed pieces of extra large driftwood and Sycamore trees with sinuous branches. We drew pictures in the sand and I skipped my first rock. Sabine held her first tiny crabs and her first roly poly bugs. And we spent hours watching the wet sand devour our feet before the foam-filled, salty and tireless waves tried to knock us down.

The phone and camera losses are nothing compared to seeing the smile that spread across Sabine's face when she saw those little bunnies for the first time. Or how closely she snuggled with me for the longest while as we sat beside the fire and sang songs. Or what it felt like to lay in that little tent with her one one side of me and him on the other, listening to the wind and the frogs, and realizing that not much else really matters.