The Glass Cathedral

ONE chill windy day while walking a deserted stretch of California coast, I saw a lone woman standing on a flat rock left exposed by the outgoing tide. She stood there looking intently seaward, motionless, as if not aware any one else was on the same beach. That vast view of ocean sparkling in winter sunlight, those great masses of snow-white clouds on the horizon, seemed to hold her as deeply fascinated as they already held me.