Beach moods

A Delaware beach has many moods. Sometimes, she is a vibrant hostess serving bright blue skies, dancing waves, and lovely breezes who invites you to come out and play. At other times, she is a moody dame, grey and dark. With pounding waves, low clouds, and damp air, this lady wants you to think deep thoughts and say prayers for a more peaceful world. On another day, the beach might be a carefree hippie, changeable and effervescent, putting you in the mind to ponder grand plans, to contemplate your place in the future, and to make big decisions.

At sunset, the beach is a proud debutant, decked out in color, showing off her most polished look. Her sunsets show different sides of her personality: graceful or fiery, outgoing or contemplative, flirty or contained.  In summer, the beach is a flitting ringmaster whose circus includes a group of swimmers in the waves, a family having a picnic on a plaid blanket, a gaggle of teen-agers playing ball, and individual people set up a little apart so they can enjoy reading amongst the merrymaking.

I go to the beach to walk off my own moods. I go when I am agitated and need to settle down. I go when I am lonely and need to remember the gifts I’ve been given. I go when I’m upset and need to decide what to do. I go when I am excited about something and need to make a concrete plan. I go when I’m thoughtful and need to compose in my head. The beach is a marvelous companion and a dear friend, even if my mood and hers don’t match.

The beach’s divergent moods are set by many factors. The tides – high enough to crowd the dunes or low enough to reveal broken shells and storm-tossed stones. The waves – rolling in with perfect curls that clap soundly as they break, or lapping in calmly, spilling quietly onto shore. The weather – bright or dark, warm or chilled, delightfully breezy or brutally windy. The sandscape – scraped of all remnants or scattered with flotsam. The birds, large gulls and tiny sandpipers – free in flight or scurrying for food or just enjoying standing in the wash or floating on the waves. Alone on a beach is an entirely different feel from joining many others who converge there for sunning or swimming or walking or fishing. Alone on a beach is quieting, soothing, awe-inspiring, and thought-provoking while mixing with other beach-goers is boisterous, engaging, fascinating, and bonding.

Delaware beaches are quite different from the Chesapeake Bay beach of my childhood. That beach was a playful boy – a narrow strip at the bottom of a cliff, rocky and scattered with tree limbs and cliff debris. I loved him, too – swimming and sunning with cousins and friends, using the pier our fathers installed each summer as a jumping platform and crabbing dock, body-surfing in the waves of passing ships, and laughing around beach fires.

But my obsession with the beach was truly born on the national seashores and bay beaches of my Cape Cod vacations. It was there I first experienced the joy of an ocean beach in the off season, there I first learned that some spectacular beaches were bordered by dunes and scrub brush rather than beach houses, there I planned my days in order to be at the beach at sunset, there I first composed odes to the beaches.

When I tell people that I am fulfilling my dream to live near the beach, I suspect they picture me perched on the sand with a folding chair, an umbrella, and a good book. The truth is, I’m not a beach-sitter. I go to the beach to walk, to listen to the resounding waves, to take in the clear air, and to revel in the boundless beauty. It’s my thinking spot and my athletic track. I love it best when I am the only one there. I am drawn to the beaches daily and I am at a loss to explain how some people who live here seldom get to their shores.

I, on the other hand, plan my days around the best time to go to the beach. I’m determined to fulfill that author-beach-walker aspiration, and I am basking in the changing seasons and varying moods of the sea.