Beach Ramble June 2026
I went down to Big River Beach to enjoy the minus tide and take some pictures. We’ve been in gloomy gray, no sun, for several days now and getting my feet in the waters of Big River and Mendocino Bay lifted my spirits.
At this time of year, mid-June, there are usually lots of visitors from out of town as well as locals availing themselves of the spectacular beach, especially when the tide is way out, but I encountered no other people until I was nearing the end of my hour-long ramble.
The roar of the distant surf created a soothing ambience as I walked along, and I thought about the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and of the many things I’ve learned since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. Wanting to find out what was really going on I did lots of searching on the Internet and found a number of blogs and podcasts featuring intelligent people interviewing brilliant geo-political analysts, and I eventually settled on a few analysts to follow closely, which I am still doing.
Now I have an understanding of what is happening and this is a relief to me because much of my anxiety about the conflict was born of not knowing enough to understand what was going on. I won’t try to explain what I’ve learned except to say the complex reality of the situation bears little resemblance to what the mainstream media tells us.
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In the timeless gray roaring, thoughts about war gave way to that fundamental philosophical question: What’s It All About, Alfie? Or in my case, What’s It All About, Toddy or Toddly or Toddji or Toddric, a few of the many nicknames friends have given me over the years.
As I gazed out at the sandbar across the river where two ravens were slowly approaching each other, I realized that what I longed for all my life, even more than success with my writing and music, was to connect deeply with people of like mind and spirit, and how only rarely had that happened for me.
By “to connect deeply” I mean to thoroughly recognize and appreciate and identify with each other on many levels, especially creatively. And most fascinating to me is that every such profound connection I’ve made in my life came about instantaneously and simultaneously, suggesting that for unfathomably complex reasons I and these people were:
- peas in a pod
- brought together for a divine purpose
- lucky
- cut from the same cloth
- pawns of the universe
- aliens from the Zargon Galaxy
- shaped by complimentary astrological influences
- all of the above
- none of the above
fin