Which Is It?

Witness to devastation or search for reassurance - which is it that pulls us to the sandy barrier between ocean and population after a battering storm?

For myself I must confess it's a little of both.

I'm always awed at the way nature can change miles of landscape with a single swipe of turbulent weather. There is an inability to comprehend how water can move hundreds of tons of sand in increments of sixty minutes. And just how does wind lift a piece of driftwood from the beach and drive it through the siding of a house a quarter mile away?

As intriguing as it is to see these things I want to see someplace else - not at the beach I visit. Yes I know every beach is somebody's beach but I want mine to be special. I want to know that when summer arrives the waters of high tide will stay where they belong - at the edge of the sand, not over it. I want to know that despite nature's temperament I still have my place of solace and rejuvenation.

Now if I could just get mother nature to see things my way.....

Turning on a Breeze

The glare of morning sun racing from horizon to shore had lessened as the sun rose ever higher into the royal blue sky. The crisp contrails of jet engines thinned into wispy curtains that others would take for clouds. Heat started to rise from previously damp sand and those strolling the water's edge risked an occasional detour into the swirling eddies.

The stiff breeze coming from the west brought only the inland heat. Umbrellas popped open. T-shirts and cover-ups came off. Skin glistened with newly applied sunblock. The volume of conversations lowered as folk succumbed to heat induced naps.

And then a tang salt was carried by a breath of cool; a cool quickly chased by a gust of heat. For long minutes they played back and forth - these breaths and gusts - until with the surety of the slow but steady turtle the breaths one out.

Umbrellas tool on extreme tilts - now blocking breezes rather than sun. Shirts and cover-ups reappeared along with beach towels thrown across legs and feet.

Just like that the breeze had turned the day.