Being by the coast can be an enriching experience, a living, human acquiescence to Nature’s power.

The expansive sea is awesome in its power, especially when a bitter wind whips up the white-laced lips of briny waves that drive us from the water’s edge. In sun or sand-blown, we stride along cliff and shore, soaked by showers seeping from a basalt sky, perhaps clutching the tiny hands of oil-skinned children.

Catching a breath in a sheltering abandoned bandstand, the only music we hear is the song of the sea, which should remind us of our shallow mortality and that only the oceans forever endure.

Then the tide changes, the sky clears, and the children find a patch of rock-strewn sand, yellowish, washed in renewing warm sunlight and revealed at low tide. Swirls of green in shallow pools, crabs evade a lowering shadow. Warmer, the sun softly shines on an edifice made in gold, a golden Castle summer dreamed by a distant hazy horizon.

An onshore breeze blows in a waft of squelching seaweed as windbreaks flutter, windmills turn, and water-winged children rise from the blue, blue sea at their Mother’s call; it’s time for tea. Those guiltless children never see the guileless tide turn against their castles in the sand or witness their dreams washed away for another day. 

Then: a cry of gulls, a sharp tang of vinegar, a shake of salt on scalding fries beside the crescent curve of sky-blue ocean yielding up old Neptune’s bounty, from which a dish of shellfish is thrust into the reluctant hand of an uncertain child, replete after ice cream cones with chocolate sauce and clouds of sugar-sweet candy floss. Those seaside days away make their mark on memories of childhood that get passed on in turn to children of their own now that they have grown; sadly, that’s their loss.

And then, suddenly, we are old. A cold wind scolds aged skin as we huddle in shelters, looking out at the seas. Are we reliving those distant memories when we too built castles in the sand and dreamed great schemes, only to gaze again at the horizon in quiet anticipation of our own salvation?

Photo: LYSV∆NDR