Yesterday my choice was inland to the forest or along the coast - I have a lot of free time when I'm not working and a long walk keeps me from going crazy worrying about Dad, money, and about worry itself. I am lucky to live in an area of natural beauty - and the ocean has been a constant backdrop to my life. This coast is me. We share the same salty blood.

The walk is an easy one but a solid 5 km - along the beach at low tide past the mermaid pool, which is far too cold to swim in at this time of year, though people do. Wild swimming has become a thing.

There's always something of interest on this coast - shells worn into lattices, leather like whips of kelp, crabs and snails, dogs taking themselves for a walk, the occasional seal or dolphin. It's a world I know intimately and am most at peace in.

These days there's a lot more people. I miss being alone here. I find the beaches that are relatively uncrowded, small blessings in busy days. I guess it's nothing on the crowds of Europe.

I take the upper route home, through tea tree and iron bark and grasses that in summer hide snakes, glimpsing the view down the other side of the headland down toward Angelsea. I'm satiated. Without ocean time, something is missing. A heart beat skipped.

I wonder what life would have been like if I'd been raised in the mountains instead - the bitter winters where snow and ice cling to eucalyptus and make the way treacherous, and the secret swimming holes in the summer heat. Here the mountains are busier now too - 4x4 weekenders, vineyards and Air BNBs. The mountains have their own beauty. I loved the hilly charm of inland Portugal, the gentle hills in the UK. My legs felt the burn. Being raised in relatively flatland, your body isn't used to ascents. I imagine myself sometimes with sturdy thighs gathering wild herbs on rocky mountainsides, herding goats to find tufts of grass and tender shoots from trees.

What would it have been like, I wonder, calling coo-ee to my family in the valley below to let them know I was a coming home, or to watch the tips of rocky crags disappear under wet fog? To be snowed in when the winter comes, unable to drive down the black iced roads to civilization below?

I could have been a mountain girl. But instead, I'm a woman of the sea, a mer-girl, with tangled seaweed in her hair and sand in the sheets.

This is in response to the LOH QOTW which asks if we prefer the mountains or ocean better.