Days like this I think: people drive hours, jam the bridges, crowd the motels and hotels, B&Bs, friends' and relatives' spare rooms and couches, summer rental cottages, camp grounds ... and I LIVE HERE. They think that's their beach but I know it's MY beach, all the way out around that arc, it's all mine, all year long, not just in July and August. I'm there at 8:00 a.m. when those chairs aren't there, only a few early walkers like me leave footprints at the water's edge, then it's MY beach. I have my favorite place to stop and do the tai chi easy (trademark) that feels graceful and is invigorating without vigorous effort. I have been coming down at 7:00 on a Tuesday or Wednesday evening with my daughter to do yoga with her gym teacher and a handful of others, by then the sun is sinking and the moon is rising, nearly everyone is gone. I am not greedy, I don't have to own this beach, I simply stake out my bit as I walk.
How beautiful it is now that summer has finally settled in! A cloudless sky, on Sunday morning (at least today), no visible boats on the water. All is uninterrupted blue, the most serene color in the rainbow. The gulls gather just where they know Stephanie will be when she arrives. She will throw snacks to them and they will fight over them. They watch for her. She is "the gull lady" -- oh, not one of those dotty old women who loved birds (or cats). She's more Barbie than batty. Sometimes a poet sometimes an essayist, always concerned about the beach, the ecology, the influx of tourists.
Already we are eager for September, when the tourists go and the beach empties ... but I am not wishing away the summer. This is the season I remembered so vividly when the snow was falling last winter. Ah...and to think I LIVE here.
