Here at the beach for a week, I’m soaking in the landscape, as I always do. It’s not just the sun and the sand (which I’ve seen little of yet due to my arriving at the same time as Tropical Storm Fred) — but also the air (humid, with a salt breeze), the twisted banyan trees, the rubbery leaves of the palmetto frond I found floating in the pool yesterday.

Sights and textures like these free up the mind, set the imagination spinning. I wonder about lives lived entirely amongst such things and how they would differ from mine, tucked into the rolling roads and greenery of the Virginia Piedmont. 

I have no answers to this question, and surely a life is much more than the sum of what the eye sees, what the skin feels. But in the grand scheme of things, these make a difference, I’m sure.