A Walker in the Suburbs

This time last year I was in Benin, West Africa — zooming around on zemidjans, glimpsing a baby cheetah in the wild, strolling past roasting pigs’ heads. Another world, a world I’m glad I saw, especially now that part of that world has come to live with us.

And, because I’ve seen this world, it lives within me. Its sights and sounds are a bulwark against the sanitized air of the everyday.

So today when I’m crammed into a Metro car or dealing with yet another work crisis, I’ll think of the  vast grassy emptiness of Park Pendjari, stretching all the way to Burkina Faso. I’ll conjure up the palm trees lining the beach road from Ouidah to Cotonou. I’ll recall the thrill and terror of the long dark zem ride to the bus stop in Nattitingou.

I wasn’t always comfortable over there. I said my share of Hail Mary’s. But the trip is a rich, deep well of experience. I’m so thankful to have it.

I’m taking a virtual vacation today, remembering the June trip out West, stopping for the evening in Gillette, Wyoming, after a late-afternoon stroll around Devil’s Tower.

There had been that feeling at Devil’s Tower, one I hadn’t experienced in a while, of being truly free. Usually I book accommodations in advance, but this was the last full day of the trip and I wasn’t sure of the itinerary. So there were 50, 70, maybe even 100 miles of open road ahead and no sure resting place. I knew there would be some place, of course, but wasn’t sure what place.

The place became Gillette because the bones were weary and the motel was the right price range (cheap!). And the restaurant became Chinese because it was the one across the street. 

But the waiter — he was the magical player in all of this. “Have an egg roll,” he urged, his smile lighting up the almost dining empty room. “We don’t just have best egg roll in Gillette; we have best egg roll in Wyoming.”

Well, that did it. The egg rolls came, and they were indeed delicious. And I thought about the randomness of travel, all the fun and funky experiences it opens you up to. All day there had been red rocks and curving roads and grand open spaces. And now, on top of all that, I was tasting the best egg roll in Wyoming.

My beach walk these last few days has taken me along a stretch of strand that floods in high tide.

Yesterday I was early enough that I had to remove my shoes and pass through the area barefoot. Today I went later and could dodge the waves.

But to do that meant becoming a wave-watcher, noticing the pace of the surf, its intake and outflow, its rhythm which is no less than the rhythm of the earth and moon.

Being on a beach brings elemental motions to mind.

Here in the subtropics the palm trees shade you but the shadow they give is not solid but porous.

It doesn’t provide the same drop in temperature as do the big deciduous trees of home, but it is beautiful to observe and —if possible — photograph.

Striped shadows, delicate designs, green fronds waving — shade as a fluid, chancy, sometime thing. 

I never visit a beach without thinking of Anne Morrow Lindbergh and her classic Gift from the Sea. I don’t have a copy with me this time but I remember her description of the beach rhythm. So infected am I by this slow and leisurely pace that I’m just now writing a blog post — at 6 p.m.!

Maybe this will be tomorrow’s post. Or maybe just today’s. A world ruled by clocks and deadlines suddenly has … none.  I took my watch off when I arrived and don’t plan to wear it till I leave.

A delicious languor has set in. Eating when I’m hungry, sleeping when I’m tired. Picking up one book, then another. Letting recent events percolate ever so slowly through a slowed consciousness. Maybe I’ll reach some conclusions, maybe I won’t.

What’s important for a change is not that I try — but that I rest.

Not a typo. It’s just that I’m pretty sure I’ve used “Back to the Beach” before. Still, what better way to describe that first glimpse of the ocean and waves, of the vast plain of sand.

Yesterday’s arrival was complicated. Tampa had four inches of rain in eight hours. Planes couldn’t land. My flight was delayed. Rain continued off and on throughout the afternoon, so it was late in the day when I finally made it to the shore.

But it was the same as always. The drop in the shoulders, the air in the lungs, the feeling that once again I’m in a place where I can slow down, think, heal.

Back to the beach.