Beach 1

I grew up at the shore. Beach is a sacred word to me. The first step
into the sand where your instep fits perfectly and those grains of sand
slip through your toes is like that first sip of coffee in the morning.
It's right and it needs no further explanation. The sound of the waves
lapping against the shore is life's sweetest music. It cures what ails
me. Laying on a blanket, heat pouring down, seagulls speaking in their
brash language, eyes closed, the sun leaving orange disk impressions on
the closed eyelids, the waves sounding closer than they are, children's
laughter; all add up to an experience like no other.

Then there's the salt water. Always cold and full of life, twirling,
moving currents, heavy with salt and smell and tingle. It moves like a
person around me, holding on and letting go in a bizarre but comforting
Jitterbug, yanking me back as I try to walk out, tickling my feet in
the last steps as I walk away, tempting me to come back.

So now I'm five hundred miles from it. Sitting on a grass beach with
trucked in sand lining the shore of a puddle amidst a circle of trees.
The water is warm, the bottom is mucky and my toes sink in a clay
mixture that houses creatures that are foreign to me. They swim among
the reeds and lily pads nearby and I feel like a stranger here. Buoys
line the border of this swimming area and there boats sit catching
walleye and other fresh water fish who feed among the weeds. The water
laps on shore from the wake of motor boats and jet skis with no life of
its own. It twists and turns and flaps by a fresh breeze that comes
from the mountains and it smells faintly of pine, gasoline, and water.
The trees divide the cerulean blue sky from the water and the surface
takes on a gray tint. There is no blue on blue like my familiar
horizon, it's striped and the colors don't flow, they lie like a train
track separating the top from the bottom, keeping the two aspects of
nature apart.

The clouds I see here will be by my shore, the ocean tomorrow. They'll
relieve their burden of lake water over a sea I know so well and mingle
like a roomful of strangers until they've found a home, learning to
accept the new conditions, the new air, the salt, the seagulls, the
sand. They will learn the new dance that nature teaches them on the
shore. The thought of those clouds coming back around one day renewed,
refreshed, changed, to drop their gift of water in my space makes me
think I'm lucky in this place to still be connected to my beach.