sand sun water

I don't miss too much about Florida, my home state - in particular the ubiquitous palm trees, which I credit for making me in such a hurry to leave once college was in sight. After nearly 12 years of life in New England, I've even learned intolerance to heat and humidity, which I craved while growing up on the Gulf coast - though I can't help but crave bright, clear, sunny days near the ocean.

Recently, I visited a beach on the coast of Maine and found myself remembering the feel of sand sliding between my toes. As I wrote to someone once, sometime in high school I lost my fondness for bathing in the hot sun, the type of sun only found at the beach - and especially at one of the whitest beaches in the world (Siesta Key Beach, winner of the 1987 Great International White Sand Beach Challenge, judged by the good people from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute) - the type of sun that makes sweat bead on your skin, behind your knees, on the small of your back, at the nape of your neck within minutes of laying down on your towel - the type of sun that makes a slight breeze feel like sweet release from the persistent, blazing, nearly unbearable, but ultimately irresistible heat. Whereas my younger, prepubescent self had been a semi-aquatic creature, amphibian if you will, constantly in and out of the water (ocean, but also pool, if that was all that was available), as a mature 15 or 16 year old I would only venture to the beach at night, to walk in the silky, cool sand for a few minutes.

So, I found myself once again bathing in the noon day sun on a beach, but this time in Maine. Sweat pouring off my skin. So hot my eyes could no longer focus on the black letters resting on the too white pages of the book I'd brought with me to pass the time. And no breeze. I searched, then, for the natural alternative relief from the heat. The ocean.

It's difficult to be graceful on sand. I'd forgotten that. Different muscles work as the sand gives under your feet. You are forced to learn a new pattern, a new rhythm, much like a sailer on board his vessel adapts to the rocking of the ocean waves. As I made my way through the shifting, uneven sand, I reached the water and was instantly yanked out of my Florida reverie.

The water is fucking cold.

And I ran back to my towel. I'd rather be blistered by the sun than frozen by the water.