Aug 12, 2017 – Aug 19, 2017
The crunch of car wheels over gravel –from cars, from trucks, from trailers, from RV’s. Once upon a time, in my youth, I had come to associate the sound of water skis with summer and vacation. Displaced, the sound now evokes feelings of reminiscence for times passed. Now, our summer trips bring us to places with gravelly roads, travelers coming and going from one day to the next. This is the new sound of vacation for me.
Sand beneath my feet, cool and silky, especially to soles so accustomed to the harder mediums tailored by humans for humans. Walking on sand necessitates a particular sharpening of one’s sense of balance, or else a slowing of the pace to look around and breathe.
The rush of water around the ankles –cold, icy water even in the depths of summer. Occasionally I’m careless, oblivious to the approach of a wave far stronger than the rest, which then rushes in to greet me with a crash of ice cold all up my back and then leaves me sputtering with laughter as I stagger against the suction of its retreat. Sometimes rocks and shells bounce over the tops of my feet, also pulled by the tide and perhaps wandering out to the deep blue for years to come.
The smell of seawater, a concoction of salt and seaweed and sea creatures washed ashore and becoming the air. Stronger in the sun. In fog, it becomes diluted with the smell of wetness, of green life finally getting a drink after weeks without.
Driftwood. Cresting the trail that opens onto the beach, we are greeted immediately by an expanse of old wood parched white, scattered like the bones of some great beast or, more likely, like the bones of many beasts that had been devoured by the ocean and then spat ashore here where now they lie. Someone has been here, has fitted pieces of wood together to build little makeshift huts all clustered around a circle of stones which the circumscribe a collection of ashes and flecks of charred wood. Many stories are captured in these great pieces of wood –in their rings, in the names and hearts and vulgarities carved into the bark, in the very way they have come to rest in the sand.
Fog. It comes and goes like a ghostly presence, sweeping down over the sea-stacks and obscuring the water from view. It is of the same color as the clouds, as if the sky itself has decided to shroud this stretch of beach in moments of mystery and coolness and questions of rain. But sometimes it withdraws, unravels to expose swaths of blue sky and bluer water, looming islands of stone and trees, a horizon that extends onward and ever onward.
The pounding of water against the shore: perpetual, steady, powerful, the backdrop to all else that happens. Watching, one can see from one end of the beach to the other as one long wave rolls up, builds taller and taller, crests, and then spills down onto the sand with a force that sounds to human perception like something so much stronger, more ancient and all-encompassing that the strike of a thousand hammers. It is the breath, the heartbeat of this world.
Evening smoke. Not the frightening kind, but the kind that smells of driftwood and beach, of campfires shared by family and friends. As the setting sun begins to turn the sky red, so do the campfires fill the air with the smell of company and warmth. I smell this, and I think of family, of s’mores, of a red sun touching down on the horizon, a backdrop to the silhouettes of countless strangers come together to share that one pristine moment.
People. The sounds of parents calling their children to order for lunch, of couples laughing on the beach as they accidentally curve the frisbee a little closer to the water than seems safe, the screams of children as the icy ocean water nips at their heels —They actually do cry, “Woohoo!” and turn cartwheels when they’re excited. For some reason I had chalked this up to the poetic fantasy of writer’s imaginations.— the shouts of one sibling to another to bring something from the car, the low murmurs of heads huddled over campfires when no one wants to disturb the night. There are fewer here than at home, and all united in the singular purpose of getting away from it all, if only for a little while.
Stars. As evening decays into night, all focus draws to sources of light: the campfire at our feet, and the immense expanse of stars and stars and stars overhead. Away from the city lights, they emerge en masse to greet the eye of all who have traveled to see it. There is no counting their number –only basking in the pureness of their light. And to the lucky observer, a shooting star bright on the horizon, flickering quick into view, through the clouds, and then gone again.
Faintly, distantly, the hoot of the buoy bell as it rocks in the water. When we first visited this place, the source of the sound had eluded us, as it was airy as of a blown instrument, and inconsistent. But now, looking out at the water on a clear day, we can see the buoy out there, bobbing gently in time to the water’s whims. As the crunch of gravel speaks of days spent on the road, the distant bell speaks of this particular place: a greeting, a reminder, a watchman’s call of all clear, and, on the last day, a gentle cry of farewell.
