Dungeness Spit

Author's Comments

Eleven miles round trip on sand, with the tide doing what tides do, and a lighthouse at the far end that has been blinking since before the Civil War. That is the proposition. Most people walk a mile or two and turn back, and I understand the impulse, because the spit is strange and exposed and the wind off the strait can be relentless even in July. But if you commit to the full walk, something happens around the third mile that I have not quite found anywhere else on this coast. The spit narrows. The Olympics rise behind you to the south, snow still on the high peaks well into summer. Vancouver Island sits low and blue across the water to the north. You are walking on a thread of sand between two different worlds, and the scale of it only becomes real when you look back and cannot see where you started. I prefer late September. The migratory birds are moving through, the summer families are gone, and the light at golden hour does something to the driftwood and the wet sand that I have tried and mostly failed to photograph. The lighthouse at the tip is small in the frame no matter what lens you bring. That is the point. This is a place that resists the heroic shot and rewards the quieter one - a single seal head in the chop, a line of sanderlings, the way the strait goes silver an hour before sunset. Check the tide tables. Bring more water than you think. Leave the dog at home.

Gallery