A Tent, A Dog And The Sea
Saint Ilias was a wonderfully uncomplicated arrangement.
For a couple of days in July 2017, the arrangement was a yellow tent, the sea and my dog. This turned out to be enough infrastructure.
He understood the schedule immediately: inspect the water, swim, collect half the beach in his coat, lie beside the tent, repeat. I was slower, but trainable.
Camping reduces a day to useful questions: where is the shade, what will we eat, how wet is the dog, and has he disappeared again? My head had been making everything complicated. The beach offered fewer variables.
Salt dried on everything. Sand entered negotiations with everything else. The system remained stable.
There are worse therapies than waking beside the sea to a wet dog outside a yellow tent.