Hard graft

I’m on duty today, at work, doing my job. One of my jobs. The others involve writing; this one, my main breadwinner, involves being the temporary resident human of a lovable dog. So here I am hard at work, looking out at the Pacific Ocean while the dog sleeps next to me.

We just got back from a long walk on the Pebble Beach golf course. This time I took us all the way to the Carmel end of the course, which I haven’t done before. It’s a long and spectacularly beautiful walk – yes even with golfers and golf carts and sand traps in view.

I was thinking as we walked that for many of the people playing there it’s a bucket list experience. That gives it an extra something – emotional charge, I guess. The views  – of the hills behind Carmel, Carmel Bay, Point Lobos, the ocean, the cliffs that drop from the course down to the water – could not have been more breathtaking than they were today. It was very busy, so we had to be careful not to get in the players’ way, and it felt very festive. People made a fuss over Cooper, and wished they’d brought their own dogs.

This morning we went to the beach here (Spanish Bay, a few miles from Pebble) about 6 o’clock, as the moon was low in the west and the clouds were turning pink in the east. Thundering surf, a mile of empty beach, hundreds of shorebirds skittering back and forth at the edge of the surf…it’s one of my favorite things here. Soon we’ll go back there for the sunset.

I put in a lot of hours on this job!

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