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.