Tuesday, July 12, 2016

I Love My Beach


I love my beach

My beach isn't "sexy'. You don't come here to "see and be seen". You probably won't find a celebrity hiding out here, like you might on some of the other beaches on this island. Every year on Canada Day the community comes together to celebrate. There are games and concerts, hot dogs and freezies. There's a concession stand run by local teens earning a few extra dollars in the summer. My beach is out of the way, it's local, it's community.




You'll find families with young children here, because the surf isn't too high, and the tide is just right. You'll find cottagers who have been coming her for years, just like their parents before them. You'll find locals, like me, who always have a blanket, a towel, and a chair in the car, ready to go to the beach at a moments notice. 



There is a group of ladies who meet here every day in the afternoon. They're probably in their 60s now, but you know they've been coming here since they were teenagers. As they got older and married, they would have brought their children here with them. Now it's back to just them again, and they sit and gossip, and enjoy the few days of summer the weather gods afford them.



My beach is large and vast at low tide. You can sit where all of the "action" is. Or, like me, you can take your things and go as far away from the crowds as you can walk. At high tide though, you're forced to perch on the rocks or lay up in the grass that's on the cliffs surrounding the cove.


Hipsters come here, on a vacation that's out of the ordinary in it's ordinariness. My beach has starfish, jelly fish, hermit crabs. My beach has seaweed that smells sometimes, and rocks that can cut your feet. I used to bring my own kids here, but they've grown up and moved away. I still come here though, every day in the summer for a few hours. I come here to re-charge. To remember who I am. To find the rhythm of the ocean. Then I go home and go about my day. 


I love my beach in its plainness. Because of it's normal-ness. I love my beach because of what it isn't. And because of what it is. 


In the winter, my beach is hardly accessible. Only to those who are willing to tromp through feet of snow to get to it. But once you get there, you are held in awe. My beach is beautiful.