Street lights, Rain, Salmon River, Change.

It is illuminated. Frozen in the night. Slowly passing with a fluid continuality. Caught in the dull orange glow of the streetlight it causes my head to turn, eyes to focus. The misty rain dampens my turquoise jacket. The strange warmth of the night was perfectly contrasted by the sudden turn of the weather, the overcast nature. I become lost in the light, my thoughts slip past my body, drag me unwillingly to another frigid dreary night months before.

Our steps echoed in the still Californian night, the sound of a waves crashing on the rock outcropping the only intrusion into the silence. Fingers tightly interlocked, our hands melded together, we tentatively stepped on to the pier. I cast a glance at her face, hidden by hood of her sweatshirt. She turned her head, caught my eyes and smiled. In a few days I would be gone. I would leave her. I would trade the rainy coast for the hellish Idahoan sun, the burning white sand beaches, the childhood dream of spending everyday on the river . We reached the end of the pier, neither of us saying a word. Not more than an hour earlier we had been sitting on the couch at my best friends house, now we were at the coast, feeling the night, hiding from impending separation. A sudden whooshing noise much like that of a newly opened bottle sent salty spray into our sniffling faces. Both of our bodies lurched forward to see where the sudden spray had come from. The dark shining tail of a whale disappeared underneath the ocean, back to the search for food, back to survival. I was not in the moment, my thoughts elsewhere, to the next few days, to the end of the relationship. I could feel it would be the end, I could feel the future would not be how I desperately wanted it to be. No matter how much I wanted to be with her, no matter how much I loved her, I could never love her as much as the river. I could never give her what she wanted. I could feel the change coming, it was a sickening thought, a painful crushing feeling in my heart. I knew this change would bring the end. It would infect the wound, it would bring the fatality.

The north star is visible now. It signals the end, it is guiding me toward home. It is bringing the end. The end. I say this often now. The end of what? I do not know. I could not say. The end of freedom? The end of myself? The end of happiness?

I love this place. I love the people I have met. I love walking to the beach. Wandering by myself. Loosing myself in the hidden canyons of the campo. Speaking Spanish, the constant test, the beautiful flow of new words, foreign expressions, has grown to be a welcomed addition to the day. My philosophical musings, worries, frustrations, have no place among the relaxed nature of the Chilean people. The faces of the locals change into a smile as I converse with the same slang, the same bravado. I am afraid of the north. I am afraid of the change. I will miss so much.

That summer I was taught a lesson among the sweeping turns, vast landscapes, and captivating canyons of the Salmon river. Acceptance. While I may not want to leave, to head north, I will accept it.