WANDERLUST: The Jersey Shore

Another day dawning on Absecon Island, Longport, New Jersey
Photo by Colleen Smith


Just back in town from the Jersey Shore, where
I celebrated the start of my 49th trip around the sun with an early morning walk on the beach, thinking simple and profound thoughts:
The ocean heals. There's little on Earth more beautiful than seashells. Vacation allows re-creation of one's self. Tossing a Frisbee on a beach is a meditative act of communion. Just a bit of fine champagne gladdens the heart and causes no hangover. Raw oysters taste like the ocean. Every breath is tide turning. Mysteries never leave us, and moments of grace wash over us like ocean waves.

“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace--only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”
-- Anne Lamott

I body-surfed Hurricane Bill and lived to tell the tale. Hurricane Bill washed up jillions of jellyfish and stripped off my bikini and tumbled me more than twice. Jimmy Buffet had everyone dancing at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. I returned with a nice suntan and some new seashells for my collection. I sent no postcards, bought no souveniers. I still half-expect to find my dogs in the house when I return; and, in a way, they are there--sort of like the ghost dog in "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

One consolation regarding the melancholy end of summer: Ski season's just around the corner.