Beach Is One of My Favorite Places

Beach is one of my favorite places to relax, unwind and be at peace with myself. It has an abundance of sun, a refreshing ocean breeze and exceptionally soft sand. What a wonderful source of contentment!

Picture an extraordinarily warm winter's day, 50 degrees, brilliant rays shining down from a translucent sapphire sky. At the horizon's edge, the water is dotted with local fishermen, casting rods into the water in the hopes of catching their dinner. The soft winter's light shimmers on the surface, glinting waves lap at their vessels. Only occasionally, a stir of excitement as something wriggling is pulled from the deep.

A gentle breeze plays with my long blonde locks, bringing with the fresh, salty air of childhood memories, and a fleeting promise of early spring. Soon this sandy stretch will be filled with sunseekers, aiming for that perfect tan. Children will run and scream, building sandcastles and crying over dropped ice cream. Families will clamor for space. Somewhere, somebody will have a barbeque. Music will drift over from a Latin family's boombox, all trumpets and timpani to make your hips sway. On days like this, wedged gloriously in the midst of winter's cold caress, it is impossible not to think of those summer days. Once, I was building sandcastles. One day, I'll be shushing my own children and fretting over their sunblock.

The lapping of the waves has given way to a more insistent crashing, the wind picked up just a little bit more. The fishermen are coming home. The income tide brings with it seaweed, teasing the shore with its tendrils, pulled back to the brine, and teasing once more. This dance is refined by time, perfected by eons, simple and beautiful. When the waves recede, they pull the sand out to sea. As I walk, the sand is pulled from beneath my feet. I sink, a sliver of an inch, into the shoreline's quicksand, teetering on the very edge of the land, the very edge of the limitless deep. Crabs, who have made their home riding the patterns of the tides, in and out of the water with equal comfort and ease, scurry as each wave changes their environment.

On my beach blanket I have left my basket, which in turn has attracted a crowd of seagulls. Circling above like vultures, they know there is something in the basket of interest. They chatter and scream and squall, conspiring to steal with my lunch. I return to the blanket to shoo them off and safeguard my humble meal, but they seem nonplussed by my return. Eventually they will lose interest and fly off, searching for tiny fish or crabs from the rocks.

I lose track of the afternoon in the pages of my book. I have no groceries to buy, no classes to attend, no homework to labor over, no work -- not a care in the world nor a thing to steal my time. And it is my time, though I admit I've let my guard down and entirely lost track of it. That was, of course, the plan all along. It is only with the deepest satisfaction that I take note of the setting sun. The chill of the evening air is already drifting from the ocean, the cool reminding me to put on my sweater.