There’s something about the beach that just feels like home. No matter where in the world it is. As long as it has a few key features, like a long, flat, walkable beach, soft, smooth, unlettered sand, and a few seaside creatures that wash up on shore.This morning, I woke up before most of Montanita, a seaside surfing town in coastal Ecuador. I scarfed down a quick breakfast of banana, granola, and milk. I grabbed my ipod. And I went to the place that had been silently beckoning me all night – the beach.
The clouds have been thick the past few days, and this morning was no exception. But, sometimes, clouds are exactly what one needs to inspire a reflective, meditative mood. On the ipod, the first notes of Sigur Ros helped to set that stormy mood. But as Fela Kuti’s funky saxophone completed my two-hour sojurn, the glorious sun was out, beckoning me to jump around in the waves.
These waves beckon me still, and always, in fact. The rushing, rolling, crashing consistency of them is both inspiring and reassuring. For as long as I’ve lived and shall live, those waves will crash on; sometimes with the docile lulling of a baby being lullabied to sleep in a rocking cradle; sometimes embodying the anger of Poseidon in each crash; but mostly steady, its energy, building in each ebb and manifesting itself in each forward-flow.
I love waves. They make me feel like a child again, as I gleefully dive and jump in and amongst them. They bring a fresh, clean, crisp sea breeze to the shore, which envelops me, caressing my curves, playfully tucking my hair behind my ears, and reminding me that THIS is where I belong.
On this beach. In Ecuador. Or in Mozambique. Or Thailand, or India, or the Philippines. Or, especially, New Brunswick, the beach where it all began for me. The mother beach, whose breeze and smell and sand and water and waves beckon me home, no matter where in the world I am.
