Day at the Beach

The beach is beautiful – the sand finer than table salt – and it appears to go on forever in either direction. It’s a cold day for the folks who actually live in this state (maybe 18 degrees Celsius; 64 degrees Fahrenheit); but none of the beachgoers – clearly all from a colder, northern climate, seem all that bothered.

In the shade, you still need a light jacket but at mid-afternoon in the sun, on the beach, most of us are wearing shorts and t-shirts and several are in their bathing suits. I dig my bare feet into the warm sand and smile contentedly as I think of our winter boots and our winter coats, now stashed in the trunk of the car. We left home three days ago and I can’t help but sit in wonder as I think of the vast difference with this weather and my home – now 2000 kilometers away – currently surrounded by snow, icicles and bitterly freezing temperatures.

A young family has settled in several metres away from me and the three children – aged around 5 to 8 years old – are busy making a sand castle. It is a serious business – the tide is coming in – and they all bustle about with great and solemn importance at the job they have to do. The littlest one particularly captures my eye: she scurries back and forth; little hands full of dripping handfuls of wet sand which she plops down – one after the other – on a growing pile her older brothers are carefully carving and sculpting. The three of them are a well-oiled machine and they are clearly taking this job with all the seriousness that only a child under age 10 can possibly muster.

Eyes half-closed against the glare of the sun, I am enjoying the happy, noisy banter of the children and their parents when my attention is drawn away by a huge flock of strident seagulls. Someone has been throwing bits of food for them but I can tell from the way they are now hunching their shoulders under the sudden onslaught of gulls that they underestimated the determination and the fierceness with which seagulls will vie for food; clearly an inadequate amount for the number of gulls that have suddenly materialised to claim their prize. I am used to seagulls: we do see them in my home province every summer – but I am unprepared for how much I had missed their raucous cries; how beautiful and foreign they now seem to me.

I have never been one to just sit in the sun so it doesn’t take me long to start exploring. I have spotted the lines of seashells along the shore and I can’t wait to get a closer look. I lose all track of time as I ramble here and there along the beach, nodding a quiet hello to fellow seashell seekers as I go. I gather up the shells that look the most different, pretty or intriguing to me and examine them as I walk. Some I will keep but some I decide to return to their rightful place, always putting them down with great gentleness, in a private ritual I adopted many years ago, to honour their beauty and to send them on their way.

I have meandered a good distance down the beach when I spot a lone sandpiper and take a wondrous breath: now these are a bird I rarely see and I stand for long moments, just watching it scurry to-and-fro. I am mesmerised. I only have my phone in my pocket so the picture I take is a poor quality but I am nonetheless pleased to have a souvenir of the moment.

I realise with some surprise that the afternoon is almost gone and the air has noticeably cooled. I turn back to go to the hotel where I can put on a sweater (still a far cry from my winter coat: I’ll take it : )

I will come back to this beach again and again while I am here. It is such a gift, this reprieve of summer in the middle of a long Canadian winter.

Patti Moore Wilson/© wednesdayschildca.wordpress.com

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