Take your pleasure when it offers itself

Here it is the middle (almost) of December. We have had a whole week of gray skies, often spewing heavy rain, or sometimes just drizzling, even simply very wet and very foggy, but all gray, gray, gray.  Today the sun was out all morning. The fifty-mile an hour winds were gone, even the slight breeze was a sometime thing.  I did some errands in the morning and realized that that this was an opportunity, the first in about two weeks, possibly the last in just as long, to go walk on the beach.  So I did. The beach was as serene as the new header photo.

How beautiful it was, one person in the distance, later a couple of dog walkers  --  prints on the hard packed sand that sneaker-clad  people with medium sized dogs had been there. Mostly I was alone with the blue of sky -- where cotton wool cumulus clouds floated like duvet stuffing -- and the deeper blue of the  mile-wide harbor (cove, whatever the proper designation is). The relative quiet was lovely, the small tide rolling in, folding on itself at the shoreline, allowing a few gulls to ride up and down on its gentle waves, rolling the shoreline scatter of small shells each time it rushed a short distance up the sand.  Fortune had put a nice log at the highest tide line, near the bleached marsh grasses, where I could sit comfortably (without my tush on the wet sand) and listen to the waves, watch the blues of sea and sky and think about nothing of any importance.  If I had been inclined I could have attempted to clear my mind. But I'm rarely so inclined.  I did the tai chi routine this morning in the living room. Had I not done that I would have planted my feet firmly and gone through the routine then -- I thought about it -- but I also just wanted to be quiet, watching a couple of people with their pairs of dogs meandering up the beach toward me.

Lovely!  MY beach that I was willingly sharing -- or so it seemed.  Moving my legs, planting my feet in the soft top layer of sand, watching the changing clouds.  I hope there'll be more almost warm days this winter.  Usually there are. And I'll take advantage of them whenever I can. I am given gifts and I believe in unwrapping them, enjoying them immediately.