Return

Return

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Back home in the early morning light, I wake automatically at my near-accustomed hour. Gone is the beach vibe and the beach pace. I think about how different it is to have nothing to do and nowhere to go, to live beyond schedules.

And how shocking it is to move from one world to another. From beach walks and languor to office and checklists.

Luckily I’ve had help in this endeavor. Flying home catapults the relaxed vacationer headlong into tightly parceled time. Only worse than that — it’s tightly parceled airline time. Hurry up and wait. A parody of real life, which makes the return of schedules a comfort in comparison.

Metro is in my future; the beach is in my heart.

After the Storm

After the Storm

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A dousing overnight, a sudden storm that flooded the street in front of my motel. This morning I dodged puddles on the beach, noticed the enlarged pools and lagoons that came in the wake of a large tide and persistent rain.

A beach is always the same and always different, shaping and reshaping itself from day to day, wave to wave.

Maybe that’s the source of its power. Maybe that’s what gives us stillness — the presence of constant change and motion in a form we can understand and enjoy.

Elemental Motions

Elemental Motions

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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.

The Sentry

The Sentry

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This little guy is off duty here but I have caught him (or one of his brethren) sitting in front of a house I pass on the way to the beach, looking for all the world like he’s guarding the place. He glances to the left and right, he moves his head up and down. He is alert and ready to scamper. What he would do to combat an intruder I have no idea. But … he’s ready.

Chameleons are known for their changeability, of course, and why not variation of role as well as color? A playful mood, a cautious mood, a dutiful mood.

Here he is hanging around the boards of a deck, perhaps contemplating his next change of skin.

Striped Shadows

Striped Shadows

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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. 

Languor

Languor

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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.

Back to Back to the Beach

Back to Back to the Beach

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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.

Walkway Over the Hudson

Walkway Over the Hudson

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Two free hours in the Hudson River Valley on Saturday and a walking trail that quite literally took my breath away. It was Walkway Over the Hudson, a New York state park that gave a whole new meaning to rails-to-trails.

When the first trains crossed the Hudson on the Poughkeepsie-Highland Railway the bridge was the longest in the world. It became a park six years ago and claims to be the longest pedestrian bridge in the world.

But what struck me most wasn’t the length but the height. I tried not to look over the edge, my stomach was doing too many loop-the-loops.

So instead I looked straight ahead until I got acclimated, then a glance to the left and a glance to the right to take in the scenery. Ah yes, this was walking. A long paved path to stride on and a sweep of valley and mountain to admire.

Walk Starved

Walk Starved

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The last few days have been a whirlwind, every minute filled. What’s gone missing is what never should — walk time, think time, coming-to-terms-with-it-all time.

This will change soon, so I’m hanging on.

In the meantime, though, I realize how much I need to be outside in the elements, striding through them. It’s a combination of movement and light, of rhythm and pacing. It’s the shrubbery, the flowers and the muddy path. It’s every house I pass and every tree.

But insights come from absence, too.

Placeholder

Placeholder

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It will be one of those days. Work piled on my desk. A couple of blog posts percolating that will take too many minutes to execute. 

Time for a placeholder … because there’s not much time for anything else.

But placeholders serve a purpose. They widen the moments, hold time in check. They keep us open to possibilities. And of course, they deserve a pretty picture. Just because.