Written by Jessica —

Our trip didn’t start as planned.

The initial itinerary had us on Vashon Island, where I grew up, from our move-out date up to the weekend, when we would take off on our road trip. I had picked out a cute cabin by Point Robinson for us to sleep off the move and get ready to live a life of meager means.

However… we failed to arrive by our initial move-out date, because a heat wave hit during the move and I ended up with heat exhaustion — which resulted in us scrambling to call a moving company to help with the final push, and Connor desperately trying to quickly pull away any of our camping gear before it got swept up in their professional mover efficiency.

All this to say, I ended up alone in the cabin with the dog for a day, and at one point I got it in my head that a trip to the beach was a good call.

Readers, it was not a good call.

When you have heat exhaustion, you need to stay as cool as possible, and generally avoid the sun because your body is literally starting to cook itself. Even after you feel better, just stay in a cool place away from the sun for as long as possible. Trust me on this.

Anyway… the dog and I make it to the beach after a very steep hike down the side of a bluff — something I had done so many times in childhood it never once triggered as something I should be concerned about, until I hit the sand and remembered that water reflects sunlight, and on the western side of the island in the late afternoon, there’s absolutely no shade to speak of. Aviva had no such concerns, and immediately started climbing the piles of driftwood that gathered along the bluff’s edge. I allowed this for about 2 minutes before I realized we had to climb back up these monsters, and I had no water. I sat down for a moment, rubbed my face, and then stood back up to wrangle the dog and start the mad hike back up the hill. It was in this brief moment, my driver’s license slipped from my wallet and out of my pocket, landing somewhere amongst the driftwood and sand.

When we made it back to the cabin some twenty minutes later, the dog and I drank enough water to drain the Puget Sound, then collapsed in a heap on the sofa bed.

Some hours later, Connor arrived looking just as haggard and delivering heaps of chaos for us to sort out – before promptly passing out on that same sofa bed.

Over the next few days, we packed and organized and made several trips to the storage unit as we pared down our belongings from a life of homebodies to one of nomads. More than once, Connor and I would turn to each other and ask “are we crazy?” followed by existential dread in the knowledge that we almost certainly were, and somewhere in there asking if we really should be doing this.

On our last day in the cabin, I realized I had lost my license.

We called friends we had seen, restaurants we had eaten at, and dug into every corner of the cabin before coming to the conclusion I shared earlier with you all here: I must have dropped it on the beach days before.

We agreed there was no way I was going to get it back, and I was going to have to figure out how to get a new one ordered and sent to me somewhere along the road.

And then we tried to pack the car up in such a way as to fit all of us and all of our remaining goods and found we simply couldn’t. I called my parents, who still live in the home I grew up in, and asked if we could use their place as a staging area while we narrowed down the last of our items, again. With their blessing, I sent Connor off to drop off what he could and then come back for me – I was going to check the beach for my driver’s license. We both kind of rolled our eyes, knowing the likelihood of being able to find it there, but it was going to take him time and it was something for me to do.

I made the hike, knowing the easy part was the walk down, but finding myself growing ever hopeful as I went. I started to remember the details, like how we hadn’t been too near the water at any point, and that we were in the middle of extreme low tide, meaning the water line was further out than usual for the past couple of days. I was feeling hopeful, in what felt like the first time in years. I walked over to where I had sat down, certain that was where the loss had occurred. 

And there, in the sand, was my own face grinning back at me.

A first of many blessings this trip gave me – a story and a feeling of hope again.