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Guess he didn't drown.
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OTHERS NOT SO LUCKY....
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Ya know, there was a sneaker wave warning online... and... heavy sigh... I don't understand how people can walk on beaches like that. I mean, the beach, long and straight, and yer walkin' between the surf and dunes—dunes, not rocks—fine and dandy sugar candy, and you keep your eye on the waves, hightail it toward the dunes when you see it coming. It is exhilarating to walk on the beach when the surf is up. Redwood stumps bobbing in it like champagne corks. You get nuked with negative ions and it pounds out every vestige of stress that ever ravaged your meat sack. It's sea sex. I could go on for so long about it your scrolling finger would cramp up. Just thinking about it makes my heart try to bust out of my chest.
But, especially in winter, you don't take your eyes off the ball. Beside the regular unpredictability of the ocean, there is the fact that even though it's not storming on the beach, it is storming like the end of the world out to sea, and that is why the surf's up. This just drives me nuts because it is so obvious out there how to take care of yourself. It's not rocket science. But people go out there like they're on a trip to the mall... or the zoo. Even people who live near enough to know better.
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86 and I went for one of our walks on Manchester Beach many winters ago. I guess it's about thirty miles south of where we lived. So it was an outing. The tide was in and the waves were ranging between ten and twenty feet high. The redwood stumps that usually litter that beach were bobbing in all that, being picked up, dragged out, thrown in the air. We usually walked about ten miles, shorter if it was just a pitstop on the way to or from the store, but that day we just hung near the wide spot in the dunes... in case of the need for a hasty retreat. It doesn't ruin it. It's so wonderful you can't stop yelling and moaning and laughing and hugging. You want to rip off your clothes and run out into it. I mean you wish it wouldn't kill you if you did.
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