ode to a beach.

just some journaling i'm working on for a scrapbook layout. i needed a place to put it where i could tweak and edit as needed. comments, as always, are appreciated.



it never had a name. we always just called it "the beach". back then, it didn't need a name as we frequented it often. always during the summer but sometimes two or three times a season. as we grew older, the trips lessened, due mostly to our increasingly busy schedules as important teenagers. and as we grew, we lost the desire to spend our days tucked away on a nameless beach with our family, crammed into a too small cabin without electricity, running water or gasp! an indoor toilet. no. we had more important things to do. more important people to see. so the summers passed by without any trips to that little stretch of beach that held so many memories. the tables turned, however, as more time passed and as it always does, nostalgia took over. those memories, though bleached by time and peppered with holes, have become a poignant testament to our history.

i remember walking along that beach for hours, chin tucked to my chest, seeking the perfect shell, rock or piece of driftwood to add to my endless collection. wandering through the sand and waves, imagining the afternoon away; i grew up somewhere along that rocky beach.

it hasn't changed much through the years. the same cabins sit, tucked up into the bluffs. a bit more weather-worn to be sure, but regardless, they are there. still. the beach trucks still rumble down the beach, down to the water where the skiffs still slip into the waves to bring home the daily catch. the air is still saturated with the same distinctive scent: salt, wood smoke and fish forever mingle. the sand is still cold and still somehow always burrows its way in between your toes, despite the protection provided by shoes and socks. it is still just "the beach", as it will always be.

i sincerely hope that my children will understand, appreciate and EXPERIENCE this beach for its breath-taking beauty, its quaint simplicity, its charming comfort. and i hope, for their sake, that it never changes. i pray that it will inspire imagination and appreciation of life's simple pleasures for them as it did me...despite its nameless imperfections.