I woke up just before dawn. For a moment I laid there, watching the wind smooth the fabric of my tent, its touch gentle, like a hand pressing lines from a t-shirt. I could hear the rest of the group outside, whispering to each other, rattling metal coffee mugs and plastic cereal bowls, their silhouettes blocky against the lantern light, all of them standing hunched in their down jackets, rocking back and forth as they chewed. I crawled out of my tent and into the packed-down sand. The ground was colder than I’d expected, but the air had a warmth to it; a stagnancy. We’d camped down low in the dunes, where the wind couldn’t reach us.

I poured hot water into a pack of oatmeal and took hurried bites while I packed down my tent. I was late, and we were leaving soon.

When the entire group was ready, we put on our head lamps and trudged up the sand hills. It was still dark, but it was a paler kind of darkness, and the smell in the air had changed, had opened up, and the birds had started their single-note songs from the far-off scouler willows.

It didn’t take long for me to warm up as we walked. Each step felt slippery in the soft, sloped sand, and my backpack was heavy. I could feel it digging into my shoulders, irritating the still-sore skin from yesterday.

We walked for a long time, going uphill and then down, up and then down. Finally our guide stopped us. He pointed to the edge of the dunes, where the sand met the forest, and he told us that we would go down the trail one at a time, each person spaced out by five minutes so we could each have a moment of solitude. By the time it was my turn, the sun had mostly risen, the light growing up from the earth.

I walked slowly, taking it all in. It was foggy under the trees—a gray-blue kind of fog that was easy to see through—and the ground was soft, almost spongy beneath my boots, covered in fallen needles from the hemlocks and shore pines. It was so much easier to walk on than the sand that I felt like I was floating.

I caught glimpses water, but I couldn’t quite make it out. And then I rounded a bend, and I could see it—a small, dark pond. I stopped to look and, right there, illuminated in a ribbon of light, was a large, white swan, almost completely still. I had never seen a wild swan before—I would never have expected to see one in the forest.

I knew I would remember that moment forever—the air just starting to warm, the ocean a thin trembling in the distance, my skin dry with salt, wind-hewn, my heart beating fast. And I was right. I still remember it well, all these years later—how I stood there watching the swan until I heard footsteps behind me, the next hiker in the group. How I ran up the trail to increase the distance between us. How, when I looked back, the swan had left the light, slowly gliding, turning silver in the shadows.