A Walk On The Beach

After our second long day of design work, several of our team raced for planes. I wasn't able to make connections for tonight, so I decided to walk on the beach behind my hotel that had been seducing me since I arrived three days ago.

Heaven! If there is anything that will more instantly unwind me after several days of hard work than a walk on the beach, I certainly don't know what it is. This was a nearly perfect day for beach-walking: sunny, comfortably warm without being hot, and a slight breeze. As I hit the beach, a large tug boat with a cruise boat in tow pulled her far enough that she was able to carry her passengers on under her own power. Soon I spotted the tug returning without her precious cargo.

At one point, I stood and looked at the ocean on wonder. There was a timelessness about my gaze. Before me flashed all the other beaches I've walked on and other oceans, seas, and, as a girl, even the Great Lake Michigan. The children building sand castles, boogie boarders riding the small waves, and even the two white-haired women enjoying body surfing could have been on any of them.

What is it about any and all beaches that so mesmerizes me? There certainly is a magic of the ebbing and flowing of the tides, which so mysteriously, yet so predictably that there are tide tables, come and go twice a day. OK. I understand about the gravitational pull of the moon, but even how something on the moon changes the flow of the water on Mother Earth is a bit of a wonderment to me.

Yet as I continued my long walk, I thought what was the most wonderful and mysterious thing about beach-walking to me is that as I walked along the western edge of the Atlantic Ocean at that very moment on the other side of these waters there were black, brown, and white people, speaking many languages also walking o beaches. There were undoubtedly children building sand castles and old women body surfing just as those around me. Somewhere on the other side of these waters there were young lovers and old couples holding hands and lingering for a kiss just as those around me.

I think that is a wonder: that as different as our looks, clothes, and tongues, we are probably more alike than different, and we are connected by this massive and timeless body of water.


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