Did anyone feel it? The balminess of late afternoon? I love the days without wind, when the lack of something lets another something exist. Without the wind, the stillness itself takes on character. The smokestacks of the pulp mill emitted their plumes straight up. The barest tracks – snakes, foxes, raccoons – stayed evident across the dunes, whereas normally the wind erases all traces of life that have crossed the sand. For the first time in recent memory, the sun’s warmth had a chance to be felt, not blown away by a bitter northern breeze. The fog formed from nothingness, then lingered, coloring the bay otherworldly as we crossed the bridges, a lone heron stock-still in the mudflats. The singing of frogs traveled half a mile from the wetlands to our door. The ocean’s bumpy surface smoothed into perfectly curved liquid glass, sky and horizon melting together. The pause suggests the storm is coming, but soothed nonetheless.