There was a place I used to go in the summertime. It wasn’t very popular since it wasn’t sandy like the other beaches. It was covered in rocks and the water was full of dead man’s fingers seaweed. I would usually find myself alone for miles around.
After every big storm, I would walk down and look at everything the waves and the wind had brought in. More rocks and seaweed, driftwood, sea glass. Every once in a while I would find a washed up buoy and bring it back, slung over my shoulder, to add to the collection my father had begun thirty years earlier on the side of the weathered old shed. They were hanging on top of one another right beneath the peeling “DK’s Delicious Lemonade” sign.
On cloudy days, I would buy some fried clam strips, a Del’s frozen lemonade, and sometimes a new book from the Island Bound Bookshop, and go down to my rocky shore and just sit and read and stare at the sky and the birds for hours on end. The sun would inevitably begin to set. No matter how many times in your life you see a sunset, it will never get old and it will always be beautiful.
I’d walk back, flashlight in hand. Even though it was dark and I was alone, I never felt afraid. I felt safe, calm even. A rustle in the bushes was just a deer. Everything around me was illuminated by the night sky. Without light pollution, I could see what felt like every single star in the universe, but it never made me feel small. I don’t remember ever having that “I’m just a small speck of dust in the universe and I don’t matter” phase. If anything I felt lucky that everything lined up just so, that I came together, that I can look at the stars and the moon.
The next day might be golden and sunny, so I would go to the sandy town beach with the crystal clear, ice cold water. My friends and I would make sand castles and accidentally cut ourselves on the sharp dune grass. We’d go into town to get ice cream cones and walk out to the end of the jetty, and those are some of my fondest memories. But when I go back to the island today, those aren’t the places that I’m drawn to. I find myself going back to my rocky shore with the murky water.
It is different going back there today. It isn’t as familiar as it once was. I suppose that is true of most childhood memories and hideaways. But that doesn’t diminish its importance and the purpose it served me, as a respite, at the time. Things change, and that’s ok. Trying to force something into what it once was is a waste of time, in most instances. Life, I’ve found, is about moving forward and building new memories in new places.
I still love cloudy days, though.
