" ' The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home . . . '
— Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

"Funny how the Ebey's Bluff trail starts at a cemetery, its headstones bellowing out lost names in cement brocade. It feels like beginning at the end. But somehow that seems appropriate for Annie Dillard's words scribbled in my hand – The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home . . . – because I find so many gaps here: the moment between life and death, the passage between life and afterlife, the twinkling of an eye between here and there. To those of us who wrestle, or toy with, or wholeheartedly embrace thoughts of heaven or the next life, the space-gaps in the graveyard almost seem like hiccups in time, holes dug out where the seed was placed, the hull that once surrounded personal essence, now coddled with dirt and sod, hoping the invisible sprout will journey on. The gaps are the thing. Gaps temporarily filled. Gaps gaping with open mouths, open jaws, open arms. Gaps anticipating the next human seed.

"It seems like a sobering place to start a journey, and it is, but not completely. Walking in a landscape of my own intentional silence, the interiors are bubbling and in constant motion. The valley below the bluff is checkered with farm fields in colors of amber and emerald. There is a joy to all of this, both the bubbling thoughts and the silence of the serene scene. And there is a gap even here, between this 'time out of time' opportunity on a small trail near Route 525 and the town of Coupeville, which leads me back to everyday life; that philosophical gap between hiking trails and highways.

"Moving along the edges of this bluff, I continue to notice gaps everywhere: in the space between the rustic logs of a historic blockhouse, in the charred fireplace flue of an old cabin, and in the underhousing crawl space there that's teeming with mystery, filled with invisible stories. Spaces, spaces everywhere, and more than a drop to think. Gaps aplenty. Gaps in the human-built world. Gaps in the natural world.

"I ask myself, how are they a home? How are the gaps home?

"I look up. The sky above me, with all of its cloudy etheric shapes, is a gap between earth and outer galaxy. Between myself and the water's edge, bleeding with eye-blinding light up ahead of me, lies a gap between here and there. And I find that as I breathe – in-breath, out-breath – there is a gap poised between the drafts of air coming in and the carbon dioxide going out. At the very top of the breath, a stopping point, neither inhale nor release. Is that the spirit's home? And why does Spirit want to live there?"