I’m stressed out, worn out, hollowed out by the debt ceiling/deficit drama.
I’m bummed out, grossed out, skeeved out by the monstrous fools and poltroons running this country headlong into disaster.
I’m checking out of caring about the whole hideous horror show for a while. Got to recharge, refresh, reanimate the spirit before taking up the fight once more.
I’m going to the beach.
And not just any beach — the winter beach. Vast, serene, cool, capacious, spreading its ephemeral dance floor for any who brave the chill winds of winter to explore it.
I walk up the boardwalk crossing the dunes, and there before me sweeps the beach — quiet, sparsely peopled, peaceful.
Even the waves stroking the shore are muted today.
The sand stretches out before me, limitless (or so it seems), calling to me to go onward, onward.
Horses and dogs, verboten from April through September, are welcome, and their humans make the most of that temporary liberty.
Sometimes other critters haul onto the beach too.
Ahhhhhhhhhhh…………… So peaceful, so relaxing, so mutedly soothing is the winter beach.
The dune faces are at once eternal and ephemeral, dancing with wind and wave to and fro, now here, now there, now growing, now vanishing.
Flotsam rides stormy seas to land, lies stranded awhile, then on another storm surge vanishes back into the waters that hurled it forth.
Rocky headlands scatter stones into the sand.
The stones defy the sea, though in time they too will wash away.
Fluff and foam, wavelets lapping feebly against rock, easily repulsed yet in the vastly long run triumphant.
There’s a special quality to the light over the ocean and its shore, in good weather and in bad.
People are drawn to the winter beach, undeterred by the cold sharp wind that rules it. They walk, they dig holes, they play fetch with dogs, they simply sit or stand and contemplate the ocean.
Yes, I think I’ll go back to the winter beach for a while, walk away from all the madness, let the serenity fill my soul.
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