The drive to Fernandina Beach is quiet, peaceful, and dark. I wonder if I’ll hit a gator on my way there? Are they like deer where I come from, littering the sides of the road in innumerable casualties? I don’t encounter any, though I’m told that armadillos are frequent targets of moving vehicles.
I get to the beach just before magic hour, or rather, magic five minutes. I have time to wet my toes before the sun rises over the Atlantic, a truly beautiful, yet strangely ephemeral – given that it has happened every day for ten ten thousand years – sight. I am the only person about without shoes, and the only one touching the water. Strange, I think. Hope the water isn’t contaminated…thoughts of the frequent sewage spills in my neck of the woods run through my mind. But this is the open ocean, I tell myself, pretty hard to poison an entire ocean.
I walk for some time down the beach, lazily taking pictures and feeling the warm water rise up my legs. The sound of the ocean is comforting, like a balm I didn’t know I was missing. There is no question’ this was worth getting up at 5AM (after only the same number of hours for sleep) and taking a forty minutes drive for. Ahead I see other stragglers. Some doing nothing but watching the water, now some without shoes. A man and his dog, playing in the surf. And finally, what I’ve been expecting since I got here and saw these fantastic waves, the surfers.
I find the beach nearby as good a place as any to stop, least I can watch the surfers if I get bored of writing. The bugs come out the minute I stop moving, and I am reminded to pick up bug spray…and sunglasses…and sunscreen. The sun grows steadily brighter, until there is nothing left of the orange glow of dawn, and only the pure, clear, yellow of day remains.
I am startled out of my reverie by the sudden and close sound of a rattlesnake buzzing its tail in warning. Just before I throw myself to the side in a decidedly unflattering way – I see that it is no snake – only the sound of a ‘beach-jeep’ and its attendant trailer, passing my by on the beach. How odd, I think, but how very comforting. Its as if I’m in one of those old movies that depicts an endless beach bordered by lonely dunes with salt loving bunch grasses erupting from the sand. Though hopefully not the one with the shark, I think.
As I watch the surfers sitting their boards as they ride the gentle waves and watch the sun continue its journey ever upward – my only regret is that I did not bring a bathing suit and towel. That’s all you need, I think, to get your wallet and the keys to the rental car stolen. I wonder, how does one get a job as a ‘beach-ranger’, those blokes that drive the ‘beach-jeeps’? Doesn’t seem like a bad life to me.
As the sun glares off the ocean at me, I am reminded that there is no potty in sight, and I’ve had two cups of coffee. That and the fact that the bugs are now trying to climb up my shorts. And that for lack of a towel I am sitting on my shoes, which are very good for the feet, but not so much for the rump. The sandpipers are calling, and I must away. Though, I think, I do have a lovely long walk back to the car.
Awesome, daughter
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