Morgan in green and Kate in blue with Jo Dog in the middle at the Big Dead Tree. We’re atop the bluffs of Ebey’s Landing above Perego’s Lagoon below and the Salish Sea beyond.

We start off in Sunnyside Cemetery above the prairie as we did last time, but in a different corner of the graveyard.

Kate in the woods amongst the graves.

Kate’s 11 years old in early 2010.

Kate reflects upon life and death and asks questions for which there aren’t any answers. Yet.

Who remembers their stories?

Aye, the stories, those tales beyond history. Who remembers?

Ghosts on a winter day.

Death & rebirth as life feeds upon the dead. Winter still rules the calendar, and this early March Sunday feels more wintry, chilly, and overcast than our last visit here.

Memories of other Humans captured in stone upon a world of impermanence.

We leave the macabre feel of primeval frontier Gothic/Romantic graves behind us, but the feeling haunts us thru the weather. Here, my oldest daughter, Morgan (nowadays Dylan), soon to turn 16, roams alone along the cliffs.

Playful fun during the fuzzy last days of being 15 years along.

Teenagers love to pose. And there’s mine atop the edge of the world.

As a father, I’m proud of my daughters. Each one is so wonderfully different yet each share more in common than not. I’m very proud of them. Am proud of Morgan who now goes by Dylan. And, yes, I worry about them, even tho worrying doesn’t help with anything, yet still I fret. Often, however, it’s sadness over my own mistakes and failures as a father in today’s world. Regardless of what I did or didn’t do, eventually each child is their own person and choose their own way forward thru the circumstances, challenges, and opportunities of their time. I love my kids completely anyway. In this foto, however, what thoughts go thru their mind? What does their heart feel?

Time to move on down the trail. Kate restrains Jo as another family approaches.

Last days and weeks of Winter…& it feels like it, too.

Perego’s Lagoon comes into view around the corner. Morgan took this picture of me, her Dad, with Kristina & Kate ahead of us.

Looking down at a Human on the edge of the world.

Turbulent weather churns in the distance.

Perego’s Lagoon.

Looking southwards back from where we came.

The path beckons in both directions.

The view back south.

Heading north again. Foto by Morgan Bass.

Dad leads the way as Kate & Kristina follow.

Marshes of Perego.

Perego’s Lagoon is small and also a rarity, and its rich and diverse variety of frequently changing shorelines and water levels make it even more unique as a place to explore in the Pacific Northwest.

Ah, Perego’s…wonder who & what was the original Perego? A person or an event or …?

Morgan & Kathryn sit along the edge of the trail atop the bluffs. Morgan (who now goes by Dylan) is 15, soon to be 16 years along. Kathryn, aka Kate, is 11. Sometimes they get along great, and sometimes they do not. I love them both, tho, as well as Talia, who’s 7 & a coupla months away from turning 8.

What’s going on here with those looks?

Perhaps the local rare prickly pear cactuses growing on the sandy bluffs are also a metaphor for family conflicts.

Gazing out from the top of the world as far as our eyes could see.

Kate climbs aboard the Big Dead Tree that’s midway trailside along the top of the bluffs.

Jo is excited seeing Kate clamber about up in the air.

Up!

The Big Dead Tree is the grand centerpiece along the top of the bluffs. These days over a decade later nothing’s left from a log of crumbling wood as a once mighty giant decays further into the soil to better nourish whatever lives there now. Every trip out there all of my kids and their dog loved playing on and around it. We often stopped for snacks there, too.

It’s a long ways down! While rolling down the hill like Jack ‘n’ Jill seems tempting, the long, steep grassy slopes usually continue on down to the beaches, in some places such as below us here these cliffs stop to drop 10 to 20 feet further or more over sheer cliffs onto rocks and logs.

Had to laugh as I took this picture of my wife at the time and daughter. Kate, what’s with that face? Kristina, what excites you so much? Those two have always had an interesting dynamic, clashing often, yet with similar personality traits such as stubborn, willful, and impulsive. Kristina aspires to share inspiring life lessons, and while Kate groans listening to them, she ends up incorporating what she learned from her Stepmom. In the background Morgan, a future long-distance backpacker,  inspects the earth.

The marshy isthmus divides the lagoon.

Storms and currents have piled up driftwood here from both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border.

Here comes my oldest galloping like a Li’l Buffalo Child.

Looking north along Whidbey Island’s west coast beyond Ebey’s Landing.

The seashore down below enchants and beckons.

Jo at play with a piece of driftwood.

Look at her leap!

Jolie playing in the sand.

Leaping and …

Dancing.

Morgan experiments with the Nikon D40 DSLR.

Piles of driftwood from across the Salish Sea are swept by wind, waves, & tides into fortress-like walls along the edges of Perego’s Lagoon. Pics by Morgan Bass.

My oldest seems intrigued with her feet & toes.

More toes! As Morgan’s bio-dad I, too, can spread open my left toes much more so than those on my right foot, LOL

A moment lived in the day of a life over 15 years ago as of when these words are written.

Looking across the upper lagoon to where the high bluffs trail zigzags down to beach at the end of the enclosed spit.

Kristina surveys the wintry landscape of beautiful desolation.

Today our white dwarf star the Sun feels more like a baleful orb in a dark syfy fantasy movie. Hard to believe our trip here 2 weeks ago in February felt so spring like but this one in March feels so wintry. Such is the constant churning of weather as the seasons change from one into the next turn of the Wheel of the Year.

Kathryn the Great surveys the world.

The Mythic Cave where the teeny tiny Cyclops chap lives in a log with his flock of pillbugs, those roly-poly woodlice also called Armadillidiidae.

Along comes this man poling along atop a raft of wrecked flotsam.

Kate asked him what he was doing. The man replied he was cleaning up trash along the beach, saw this, and decided to raft it down towards the parking lot. He also seemed a wee bit eccentric. Struck me as a Postmodern, dystopian Huck Finn.

Jo Jo was clearly finding more interesting things along the beach.