“I feel like I’m arriving in a dream sequence, like I’ve been here before in my dream life,” I said to Joe after we had been in Cedar Key, Florida, for all of five minutes. We were checking into a fuchsia colored camp office. A man in hip boots was dumping oyster shells from buckets […]
Some people bring home stray puppies. I bring home rocks. Over the years I’ve collected river rocks, lava rocks, Virginia quartz, pink and green flecked granite from New England, blue and orange stones from the shores of Oregon, and more. I like rocks, but I’m even more drawn to seashells. My interest in shells began […]
We had to avoid stepping on frogs the size of flies that were hopping across our path. The sand felt like talc beneath our bare feet. We followed others who seemed to know the way. Eventually, the narrow winding pathway opened to an eerie scene. People walked in groups, in pairs, or on their own, […]
“If it’s this hot in late September, I wonder what it’s like here in summer.” Colleen to Joe Day 2, The Outer Banks: The roar of the ocean is not like holding a shell to your ear. The magical illusion of the ocean’s color in evening has given way to muddy green. The shells and […]
When I’m retired I’ll walk the beach, collecting seashells. I’ll drop them like other people drop coins into a glass jar at the end of each day. ~ Colleen I’m the only one on the beach collecting shells. The whole beach? For me? When I was young I only picked up the perfectly formed shells. […]
Not really. There are lots of things I don’t plan to ever try, like bungee jumping. I’ve never been skiing and when on my bike, I ride the brakes downhill. But lazily paddling down the Bethany canals in a kayak, I’ve just discovered, is just my speed. My brother-in-law, Nelson, has been fired up about […]
Birds travel in flocks, cows graze in herds, and people hang out in throngs. A throng is what I would call the turnout of people at the beach today, the first truly sunny day since we arrived. The crowd of people and activity is dizzying. “All these people … and imagine; every person has to […]
The book I’m reading at the beach this weekend, “Word Freak” by Stephen Fatsis, is about the subculture world of Scrabble tournaments and the eccentric people who participate in them. So far I’ve learned that the game was invented by an unemployed New York architect during the Depression, that “Scrabble players do it on the […]
I woke up with a headache. My husband is on his laptop writing a school paper on “The Absence of the Father,” and I just spent half-an-hour on mine trying all possible variations of my recently changed email password, to no avail. At Bethany Beach for my husband’s family reunion, we’re staying in a family […]
The sky is littered with kites. I count 8 of them. Seagulls fly in between them, flaunting their freedom. Two women are drinking from lime-green plastic martini cups. A group of 4 are playing bocce ball. Sometimes the surf here on the coast of Delaware is so rough that you can’t swim beyond the breakers. […]
AKA: Remedy for cold spring weather. How come it’s so hard to maintain that vacation state of mind when you get back home from one? I don’t want to relegate my recent oceanfront camping trip to the bowels of my archives too soon, so here are a few snapped images for your viewing pleasure taken […]
Welcome home beach bums! ~ email from my friend Kathleen. I recently realized that ocean camping fulfills a lifelong dream of mine. The one in which my girlfriends and I skip school and vow to live on the beach forever. While growing up on the narrow peninsula of Hull, Massachusetts, we built fires with drift […]
