Its Wednesday morning. Hot hot hot. I'm sitting under an awning at Los Amigos, a surfer-hotel. The house we are staying in is associated with this hotel and is just up the hill so in the mornings we walk down here, have coffee, chat about the swell, and check email.

Cowboys are riding by on their horses, kicking up hot dust that rises behind them like a cloud. I like these reminders of where I am, of being in a new and different place.

Yesterday we walked to a beach break from our house, surf board under the arm. Down the road, slid through a few barbed wire fences, down a dirt path, along the raised dirt wall of the salt flats, passed cows and pigs and chickens. Made it to the beach break just before sunset. There were quite a few guys out there and it was our first time surfing at that location. Didn't catch a single wave, humbling...the sunset was beautiful.

The past couple days I've been thinking about Dad a lot. No one around me (except Leo) knows that my Dad died. Once in awhile I wish people did know. It's a strange thing because while I have no interest in starting a sentence in a casual setting by saying, "So, my Dad died a few months ago. Can I tell you about it?", that's exactly what I feel like talking about sometimes.

I feel Dad as part of me and in that way I don't have a reason to miss him....just focus on that feeling, that sense, that deep knowing...but today I do miss him.

Tenderness, I could even call it sadness today...Letting it rise around me, like the dust behind the horses. And then there is the precious breeze. How better to let it out, bring it far and wide, to the trees and down the road. I don't need anyone to know, to ask....the breeze carrying it onward satisfies somehow...I like that...

And so the day begins. Back across the salt flats with our boards I think. Another try at the beach break.

Blessed be the day, where I am, where you are too.