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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.)
