Into this week of lake and family come scenes from across the seas: Strong-shouldered swimmers who wiggle like dolphins. Graceful gymnasts who defeat gravity with nerve and style.
The children imitate them, do somersaults and dance on coffee tables. It all starts here, the advertisements say.
I think, yes, maybe it does … with renewed appreciation for the families of those who twirl and swim and dive.
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It was late enough in the day that dinner was no longer a vague thought. There wasn’t time for a long hike. Luckily, it’s a five-minute drive to half a dozen paths.
Yesterday it was Beckman’s Trail, an easy two-mile loop that wound up and around itself. There were boulders and grass and a strange yellow fungus foaming around the base of a tree.
The climb was mellow and the air was bracing. It was over far too quickly.
I woke this morning, as I did yesterday, to the scamper of little feet and the noise of life being lived, hard, above me. It’s the configuration of this shambling old cabin by the lake that the deck that runs the length of the main floor also runs above where I sleep.
It’s not until the respectable hour of 8 a.m. that the little ones are let loose, but once they are, further winks are impossible.
They scamper, they giggle, they push plastic kiddie chairs across the floor. If there is a quiet moment, it’s when bowls of cereal are being offered, fuel for further activity.
I’m writing quickly because I don’t want to miss a minute of it.
I imagine the walk when I’m falling asleep. It’s not just the lake that makes this place so magical. It’s the landscape around it. And I plunged into it this morning.
Down the lane, across a field still wet from dew, right at the road and up to the intersection, then back onto the peninsula. There are dips and curves, green fields, and glimpses of lake water through trees.
It’s highly walkable, this spit of land where the family has gathered, and I’ll be walking as much of it as I can.
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.
Every year when I’m in Florida I see the tiny lizards known as anoles. They’re cute little critters with big eyes, holes for ears and long tails that detach if you pull too hard on them.
These small reptiles scamper and dart. They puff up and slim down. When frightened, they freeze and hide themselves among the scrub.
I’ve had time on this trip to observe anoles up close, to watch them do what appears to be pushups but I’m sure is not, to wonder what they eat. (The answer: crickets, flies, mealworms and ants.)
Today I spotted an anole camouflaged on the bark of a palmetto plant. He was missing the fingers of his right hand. It wasn’t slowing him down, though. He was clinging tightly with his remaining digits, and taking life as it comes.
How many shades of green do I see in a day at the beach. There is the dark forest of the mangrove, its roots in water, clustered in wet spots along the road.
There is the purplish-green of the sea grape, its leaves catching light, making tunnels of shade as I exit the strand.
There is the striated green of the palmetto, wagging in the wind.
And sometimes, in the morning, there is the green of the sea.
The walks come when they will, when I wake up and make my way to the beach. The tides have their own rhythms, drawn from moon and sun and gravity.
When I stroll the beach, I’m part of the elements, pulled into their orbit, at one with sand and sea.
Time passes slowly. Eternal time, at least for an hour or two.
It tweets, whistles, sings and trills. I’m listening to it right now, though on my computer rather than in the field. In my wanderings on and near the beach these last few days, I’ve been spotting a gray bird with white markings. It’s the state bird of Florida, the mockingbird.
There are some who want to replace it with the flamingo, a bird more associated with the Sunshine State, though flamingos have been absent from the state until just recently.
Without wading too far into this controversy, let me say that the mockingbird is a splendid creature with an array of sounds that amaze and baffle. It finds a high branch on which to perch and sing its heart out. It has my vote, in case anyone asks for it.
(Northern mockingbird, credit Bob Baker via Cornell Bird Lab)
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.
