Sand: An Appreciation

A return yesterday to the coolest weather I've experienced in weeks. No heat wave, no subtropical humidity. Instead, a pleasant warmth and weight to the air. I can't say I miss the heat, but I do miss the beach, the breeze, even the sand. 

Yes, it sticks to the back of the legs and collects in the shower drain despite best attempts to wipe it off at the door. But sand is a most amazing element. 

I think of my beach walks, striding across the fluffy stuff to find the hard-packed sand at water's edge, constantly adjusting my route based on wave reach and tide. 

I think of the bounce in my step sand provides: what a wonderful striding surface it is. 

My beach trip may be over, but the memories remain. And a little of the sand does, too. 

The Sky Rules

It's what I notice first every year, even before the foamy breakers, the spun-sugar sand. It's the sky: vast and blue and dotted with clouds.

Here at the beach the sky stretches out boldly to the horizon, no curtain of green to obscure it. 

Were I to live always beneath such a sky, I'd feel bare and exposed. But when I'm here, for this precious week, it opens me up, enlarges my vision. 

Here at the beach, the sky rules. 

Endless Summer

There was a freeze warning last night, and the furnace is humming as I type these words. Time to remember warmer weather. 

I'm thinking of a beach: salt air, gentle surf, an inquisitive egret strolling through the waves, eyeing the bait bucket as he passes a fisherman on the shore.

I'm remembering the way my body feels in the sun, loose and warm and grateful to be alive.

I'm reliving walks under palm trees, fronds clicking in the breeze and the air heavy and full.

As the season turns, the mind can mutiny, can claim for itself an endless summer. 

Scenic Hospitality

I made my first trip to Florida at the age of 10. It took us three days to drive from Lexington to Miami. 

It was January. We'd left the cold behind by day two of our drive, but even so the balminess of the Florida air was a surprise. It was nighttime when we finally pulled into our motel near Biscayne Bay, and the combination of darkness and sultriness has stayed with me all these years, potent memories of a place different from any other I'd visited. 

Florida has changed drastically since then, but it retains that other-worldliness. Like the lush Northwest, Florida is its own place, and it's a privilege to spend a week a year savoring its big sky, palm trees and sugar-sand beach. It's a combination I've come to think of as scenic hospitality, and this morning, back in Virginia, I'm appreciating it all the more.

(A picket fence I walked by every morning on my way to the beach. It's decorated with pineapples, the symbol of hospitality.)

Afterglow

I felt like a commuter walking against the throng. Everyone was leaving. I had missed the sunset, one of the chief entertainments around here.

Taking myself to task as I watched the darkening sky, I wished I'd spent less time searching through the t-shirts and trinkets.

But light was lingering in the west. I could still enjoy the afterglow. Which is what I did ... and what I plan to do as this beach trip becomes another beautiful memory. 

I've Got Rhythm

A walk by the sea provides its own ceaseless beat. In and out. Strike and pause. The rhythm of the surf is the rhythm of life, more or less. 

As I've walked the strand these last few days, I've thought about family and friends, about how grateful I am for them — and how grateful I am for this time apart in which to appreciate them. 

Just as a wave rolls to shore before being absorbed back into the ocean, so does all life pulse with this ebb and flow. We are not inert creatures but products of movement and motion. 

I've got rhythm. We all do. 

Storm Dodger

Storm chasers are bold (some would say foolish) folks who race to observe a hurricane or tornado. I've become just the opposite, a storm dodger. Afternoon showers are such a common occurrence here that I plan my days around them. 

I walk the beach in the morning. At 3 p.m. I'm scanning the sky. Are those dark clouds forming in the west? How quickly are they moving? When do I leave the beach and head for shelter? 

There's an art to this. Depart too soon and I'll miss out on precious time in the sun and surf. Leave too late and I'll be drenched. 

In fact, I'm writing this post while waiting for some storm clouds to pass so I can take a dip in the pool. Another day in the life of a storm dodger. 

Throwing Shade

No insult intended, but all shade is not created equal. There is the thin stuff you find on a warm summer afternoon. It's accidental, created only by the intersection of building and sunlight. It's great to find it, and I've even crossed a street for it, but it's not a true, deep, cultivated shade. 

There's a watering hole I pass on my way to the beach, a small restaurant and bar that has mastered the art of shade I remember from trips to hot, faraway places where air conditioning is nonexistent. 

This is intentional shade: deep and palmetto-fringed. Ceiling fans are whirring and large rotating fans are blowing. The place is recessed but open. Every time I pass by I'm tempted to linger in its recesses, to seek relief in its dark, cool interior.

The Quality of Sand

The discerning beach-walker is a connoisseur of sand. Too hard and it's like walking on pavement. Too soft and it requires twice the effort to go the same distance. 

So one becomes aware of a tension, a balance, between moisture and dryness, tide-in and tide-out. The feet search for this balance without prompting, seeking the best path along the strand.

Sometimes they find it and sometimes they don't. But there's a pleasure in the process. 

Salt Breeze

A return to the ocean and its salt breezes, to palm trees and lizards that bask in the sun. A return to the beach.

I've grown quite fond of the subtropical climate and what it does to the muscles and synapses. In short, it relaxes them. 

It's tempting to end the post right here. 

And maybe ... I will. 

The Convert

The skin is an organ. But it's an organ that blushes. No wonder, then, that we treat it differently than we do, say, our liver or spleen. Specifically — and especially at this time of year — we protect it from the sun. Or we don't. 

For many years, I actively sought a tan. I was a member of the baby-oil-and-baking-on-a-beach crowd. I sunbathed on my towel in various parks in Chicago and New York City. I'd spend entire days outdoors daubing on only a little SPF 8. I even laid out on the hot tar roof of my Greenwich Village apartment. 

Tans made me look better, I thought. They evened out my skin tone, gave me a rosy glow. They also, through the years, damaged my skin. 

I converted to sunscreen years ago, 45 SPF or higher. But this summer, I'm redoubling my efforts. I reapply often. Sometimes, I even carry sunscreen around in my purse. I've become, if not fanatical, at least responsible.  And so, I enter the summer pasty and white — or make that pale and healthy.

Hold Onto Your Hood

The wind that made beach combing and cycling harder than they needed to be last week in Chincoteague seems to have followed us home. For the last couple of days there have been gusts up to 40 or 45 miles per hour. 

I decided to take a walk anyway, because I was driving past the W&OD and thought I'd give it a whirl. A whirlwind was more like it. 

The breeze blustered, it careened, it nearly knocked me off my feet. And while my hat was fairly secure, my hood was anything but, especially when I was walking into the wind. It blew it right off my head. At times it took both hands on the hood to keep it from flying back.

Luckily, a hood is usually attached to a coat whereas a hat is not. Which makes the phrase "hold onto your hood" ... somewhat nonsensical. 

("Who has seen the wind?" The ripples in this sand dune prove it was there.)

Beach Bling

Water, wind, sand and sky.  From these basic elements flow the beauty of a beach. It doesn't need anything else. But like a little black dress set off to perfection with a single strand of pearls, even simplicity can be enhanced with a little bling.

I've seen beach art before, but never so much of it. On a hike this week we came across scores of tree trunks decorated with whelks, conches, cockle shells — and a few feathers for good measure.

The shell trees made us smile. They invited us to contribute, which we did. They sum up the beach attitude: relax, create, enjoy. 

One Beach, Indivisible

A hike yesterday through the refuge backcountry, so far in fact, that the Maryland state line was less than five miles away. 

I've always thought it would be fun to trek from one state to another, a feat fairly easily accomplished here, since the Assateague National Seashore includes parts of Virginia and Maryland. 

But yesterday's walk stopped short of that, circled around and back to what I love most — the beach. 

Back to Virginia

The commonwealth of Virginia stretches from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. Today, we drive toward the latter. But to reach coastal Virginia we'll drive through much of coastal Maryland. 

Chincoteague perches at the top of Virginia's outer banks. We'll spend most of the almost-four-hour drive in the Free State, won't reenter the commonwealth until we're almost there. 

In that sense, we'll have done on the first day of this short getaway what all travels hope to do, which is to bring the traveler home again. 

7:32

Still thinking of the sunrise I saw on the beach. By this time the clouds would be pinking and purpling, the "rosy-fingered dawn" expanding her reach. We are only minutes away, sunrise at 7:32 this morning and now it's 7:26. 

What I thought earlier in the month when I was observing the phenomenon in person was how anthropocentric we are: sunrise. Shouldn't it be earth turn or earth set? 

But we name things as we see them, and to us the sun does rise, although it may seem to flatten and split in the process. 

I'm seeing it again, the miraculousness of it all. It's 7:32. I'm pushing publish.

Far Away and Close at Hand

Since witnessing sunrise on the beach last week I've been thinking how nice it is to have a view of the horizon. It doesn't have to be the Atlantic through a scrim of dune grass. I'd welcome any view that took me out of tangled green. 

Be careful what you wish for, though, I tell myself. Spending time in bare, flat places makes me realize how soothing is the company of trees, how subtle but important is the rise and fall of the land on which we find ourselves.

How lovely it would be to have it both ways, to have the openness of the horizon and the coziness of trees — the greensward and the den, the faraway and the close-at-hand. It just occurred to me that I grew up in such a place, the natural savannah land of central Kentucky, the Bluegrass. No wonder I want it all.

(The sun slants low over the Osage orange trees on Pisgah Pike in Woodford County, Kentucky.) 

Weather Denier?

It was 35 when I woke up this morning, a temperature that I associate far more with winter than with fall. It's too early, I want to shout from the rooftops, knowing of course, that the weather gods will ignore me. 

But maybe I should not go gently into that (not) good night. Maybe I should be a weather denier, one who strolls through gales in shirt sleeves and shorts. 

Unfortunately, I'm just the opposite. Right now I'm wearing two layers of wool and one of cotton, and my warmest stretchy pants. One of my sweaters has a hood. I'm feeling a bit bulky ... but almost warm. 

(Looking at last week's beach shots to warm myself up.)

Punctuation

"I wandered lonely as a cloud," wrote William Wordsworth. Though his cloud floated "on high o'er vales and hills," mine was perched in a perfect blue sky above a sand dune. 

How solitary it looked, this cloud, how out of place, as if it had stumbled into the wrong act of a play. 

Where were its compatriots? There were other clouds in the sky that day, but nowhere near this one, which had dared to move inland instead of out to sea. 

Its out-of-placeness only emphasized its ethereal boundaries, its contrast of white with blue. It looked like the dot of an explanation point, punctuating a late summer day. 

White Noise

I write this post to the sound of waves pounding the shore. It's a sound I never grow tired of. Nature's white noise machine, its beating heart. 

Like a white noise machine, if you listen hard enough you find the rhythm in the randomness, the patterns in the passages. 

Like an inhale and an exhale there's a sucking in and a blowing out, a familiar back-and-forthness. Action, pause, reaction. A rush, a rustle, the life force. 

(Gulls in the surf, oblivious to the white noise?)