Carol Nethen West

Wade in the Water

Wade in the Water Descending three sets of stairs at the big country house in silence had become a well practiced morning routine. I padded through the living room and eased the heavy double-hung wooden doors closed behind me, shuffled down three brick steps and walked straight out to the car. Outside, the scene was illuminated by a late moon, simmering low in the pre-dawn sky, its reflection spread out over the cliffs and the bay like a beckoning path to some other place. I had learned to witness these transient moments with reverence - with the chance that beauty itself could diminish fear, the dark, the cold or, perhaps, the permanent scarring of being homeless on my soul.