"I typically enjoy a beautiful beach, as I find the water and the sand to be most replenishing."
-Elizabeth Berkeley
I never plan it yet somehow it always happens. The day after Christmas - that most extravagant and lush day of ceremony and ritual - I find myself yearning for the beach.
Windswept open spaces
Scoured clean of all but
Sand and log and rock
Soaring birds overhead
Ferries gliding to and fro
Stillness in my heart.
And so it was again this year that I found myself tiptoeing past the icy waves, watching little boys and big boys throwing stones in the water, searching out the glistening heads of seals swimming nearby.
I'm not trying to forget about Christmas.
I just want to give it some space to breathe.
At the beach, I can celebrate the peace of Christmas.
^ If I swept my camera just a few inches to the left, you would see people, parking lots, kids at the playground, and homes stacked up against the hillside. But I prefer to focus my gaze here.
^ A champion rock-skipping dad and his young padawans.
^ You know what's better than one industrious little ferry plying the waters of Possession Sound?
^ Two little ferries! There's nothing sweeter than the moment that they approach each other and then...wait for it...smoothly slide past one another as they trade places, back and forth, all day long.
^ Nothing speaks to me of loyalty, care, and steady determination more than our stalwart lighthouse. A tiny thing, really, just thirty feet tall. She reaches out over the rose hips, her fourth order Fresnel lens still shining out into the darkness, showing seafarers the safest way home.
^ My trigger finger isn't fast enough to catch the seals that we always find cavorting near shore, swimming deep underwater and popping up now and then just long enough to catch its breath and then slip off again in its mysterious life beneath the waves. But a sweet little duck like this one bobs peacefully along and allows me plenty of time to take his portrait.
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May you celebrate peace in this season of Christmas, wherever you may find it.
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Read more about my 2022 Christmas celebrations.
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