Where the ocean meets the land...

What is it about the shoreline that continues to draw me, these past 60 years or so?  When I was five my family moved from Northern California to Midway Island in the Pacific.  Midway is a small island, only 1,200 acres.  We lived on it's main island that's called Sand Island and still we reveled in going to the shore, even though that magical place was always, only a short walk away.  

I’ve wondered before if there might be some kind of deep genetic, primordial memory that draws us beach lovers, to the shore. 

        For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),

        It's always our self we find in the sea.

                                                    e e cummings

At the shore water continuously forms around and pounds away at the land.  The land in turn crumbles and reforms, retreats and sometimes extents back out into the water.  Birds of all kinds love it, dogs, horses and llamas too.  

Bev and I often go to the beach after a day of boat work.  There is a beautiful one nearby.  We travel briefly through the magical dunes on our way to the shore. 

Beach grasses part like gossamer curtains at the theater, opening to reveling the coast in all it’s glory.   

The scene at the shore is always different, the sea, sky and land never the same.  A roaring tempest one day, clear, calm and brilliant the next.  Sometimes, especially in the mornings when it is often shrouded and softened by a blanket of fog.

On our most recent beach visit there was a group of 7 or 8 women in long dresses with white hats or bonnets on that looked to me to that they might be Mennonites or some similar group.  Anyways these women were playing along the shore's edge with all the abandonment and joy of children.  Playing for the seer ecstatic joy of it all as they ran and skipped long the shoreline with the waves lapping at their feet.     

Further along the beach we came to another two surfers and a kayaker enjoying the last golden minutes of a beautiful day at the beach.

The diversity of the folks that enjoy the beach never ceases to impress me; old, young and in-between, the athletic and the infirmed, women & men, girls & boys.  The beach welcomes us all back again and again.