If rocks and shells could talk, these would laugh, whistle and shout. Look at us, they’d say. Someone has picked us up off the beach, spiffed us up, cast us as heroes in a crazy beach novel.
Here we are telling a joke:
Here we are sharing a tale:
We have no idea why we were willed into being, what our creator has in mind for us. But for now, we are alive and transformed on this Gulf Coast beach.
The sounds I heard outside this morning didn’t make sense. Were the taps and creaks from errant branches, from the building warming in the tropical sun? Only when I looked out the window did I see the rain.
It doesn’t matter; I have plenty to do inside as well as out. I brought books and notes and half-finished essays. Brain food. Things to think about and read.
A trip to the beach rests the body and the mind. So I sleep more, worry less (or try to!) and ignore weather reports. How long will it rain? The clouds are dark, but I see some blue. Did the storm break the humidity?
Only one way to find out. I’ll finish this post and my morning pages, then dip my toes into the day.
I had no sooner written about Japanese forest bathing than I read about “grounding,” which is … walking outside barefoot. Grounding, also known as “earthing,” is a way of touching base with the essentials. Those who favor it say that it might help prevent chronic diseases, and research shows that it can improve sleep and lower stress.
Sounds touchy-feely (in more ways than one!) … and yet, consider this: One theory that explains the positive effect of grounding is that earth’s negative charge neutralizes the free radicals that can damage our cells. Antioxidants not from fruits and vegetables but from the earth itself.
And then there is the circadian rhythm aspect of grounding, the fact that touching ground can help regulate our autonomic nervous system, our breathing out and our breathing in.
The article in the Washington Post explaining this research ended with suggestions: Walk barefoot on ground or sand (something I’ll be doing in a few minutes, as a matter of fact!). Garden in the earth, or even lean against a tree trunk.
We are only beginning to understand how connected we are to the natural world around us.
Yesterday I read about a new trend that started in Sweden. It’s called plogging, which comes from “jogging” combined with “plocka-uppa” (Swedish for pick up). The idea is simple. You take a trash bag along on a run and collect the odd plastic bottles and cigarette butts you encounter. Disposable gloves are recommended.
Translate this to walking and you have “plalking” — or do you?
I care about the environment and have even been known to pick up a bit of errant trash. But I can’t see turning my fast walks into scavenger sessions. It’s about the rhythm, you see.
The cadence of the stroll is a large part of its magic. Take that away and you have … beach combing.
Just out on the deck for a moment this unseasonably warm morning, I find that some of the shells I’d laid out on a glass-top table have been scattered and crushed. This is not the end of the world — I should have put them away months ago. But they looked so pretty on the table, a natural collage, that I left them there way too long.
As I gathered them again to slip into a cup, I marveled at their tiny whorls and notches, at the beauty of their architecture, which is born of practicality. And I couldn’t help but think of their collector, a young girl who was trying to earn a few coins from us on the beach in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. She had a shy pride about her, and an eagerness. Once she knew we were willing to pay for shells she took off for almost half an hour, combing through the tide pools looking for the loveliest specimens.
Now I’m thinking of her face when she opened her hands and showed us her collection. Some of the shells may be gone, but that memory has not faded at all.
A couple days ago on a walk around the block, I came across the end of a beach volleyball game in Crystal City. Couldn’t resist snapping a photo of the sand. To heck with the game, it’s the sand I love, the sand I crave. So, on this last day of summer … a backward glance at this summer’s beaches.
I had my Florida beach fix in August, days of sun and surf with tropical breezes and breathtaking sunsets.
And then, I took in a bonus beach in Bangladesh. Cox’s Bazar is the longest natural beach in the world., and we managed to find a spare hour to visit it despite our crammed-full schedule.
I’m thinking of it now, the width and the breadth of it, the people and animals we met: a young girl selling shells, a labor trafficking victim who’d gotten a new start in life as a photographer, a merchant hawking pearls, a yellow dog.
It was a different kind of beach experience, no towels or chairs, no umbrellas, no skimpy suits. It was a rock-strewn beach with dark, hard-packed sand. But it was glorious just the same.
The late musicologist Karl Haas, who I still remember fondly from his radio show “Adventures in Good Music,” once had a program about “ascending descenders” or something of the sort. He may not have used that term, but his point was to celebrate the impact wrought from notes that descend in pitch but elevate in intensity.
I see the same process at work in the foliage of south Florida. Yes, palm fronds arch up and over in graceful arcs. Though their new growth shoots ever heavenward, they have an earthbound quality, too. Same with the long stringy stems (botanists would know what to call these things) that are perhaps the beginnings of a new branch.
In thinking about the foliage and the music I see a common theme: a celebration of life as it is, the ups, the downs, the beginnings and the ends. Recognizing the nobility in all of it.
Beach walkers are purposeful creatures, and when you hit the strand early, as I did today, you see them in droves: arms pumping, shoulders squared, feet clad in tennis shoes or serious sandals. I fit right in.
For the beach walker, the ocean is a backdrop, the sand a soft cushion for our plantar-fasciitis-prone heels. No shell will tempt us from our mission, which is to make it from the old jetty to the first (blue) lifeguard chair before being overcome by tropical heat and humidity.
But even the most driven of beach walkers can’t ignore gulf waters lapping, shore birds peeping, the glorious mixture that is life where land meets sea.
These are crazy days. Buying cases of wine at 9 p.m. Forgetting my lunch. Making lists of lists.
Still, the mind observes. Even when in crazy mode, the mind is active, laughing at its own craziness and finding the world an interesting place to be.
This morning on the radio, I heard a segment on artificial waves, how a company has been perfecting them, will sell its technology to indoor wave pools, the estates of sheikhs. Few details of this report have remained in my brain, but one phrase did. “We’re carving water,” said the wave creator.
The poetry of that sets the mind to spinning. An ultimately futile task, one would think. And yet someone makes a living from it.
What do you do? I make waves.
Still thinking about the beach — the fine white sand, the walks along the shore, the sunsets and early mornings, the downy plovers like so many bits of fluff.
And thinking about the entry to the beach, too, the green bulwark one passes through on the way to the strand.
For Atlantic beaches it’s a stroll past dunes and dune grass. But in Florida’s semi-tropical clime there are beach grasses and scrubby palms and maybe a spray or two of bright pink bougainvillea.
The path through the grass is not just a prelude and change of scene. It is, I like to think, a place for mental readjustment, too. It’s where I shed the landlocked me and prepare for the freedom to follow.