A walk along the beach

An evening walk along the beach is the most liberating experience I know. Once away from the access to the beach, in a spot between two beach resorts, where the dunes are wide and without a sea front or boulevard, the beach is suddenly empty, especially during a weekday. This time it was low tide, the beach wide, the sand hard and crystalline, almost without shells.

The water felt warm and pleasant when I walked through it. I suppose the sea has warmed after so many beautiful and sunny days. There are just sea gulls, resting on the sand or flying low over the breaking waves. The beach is scattered with young jellyfish, like glistening jewels on the sand, sometimes half hidden. This indicates that the wind is from the East, if there is any wind at all. 

Some evenings ships fishing for shrimps, follow the coastline not very far out at sea. This evening everything is quiet. There is a wideness, and emptiness which also empties my head. Is it the sound of the waves, gently breaking on the sand? The cries of the seagulls? The rhythm of my footsteps, hardly noticeable on the sand? Or the feeling of unimportance, such a small creature in this wide space? 

I wave my arms, sing at the top of my voice, fill my lungs with sea air. This is bliss, utter bliss. In the distance the silhouette of the next seaside town is beckoning. I am drawn in that direction, but do not wish to arrive and leave this space, the birds, the sea, the sand, the dunes. But the silhouette does not seem to come nearer, even seems to withdraw. There is a slight mist, not a fog, the lingering of an earlier sea mist which can bring down the temperature some 10 degrees in minutes, chasing away the sunbathers. When the sun goes down, the sea mist gradually disappears as the difference in temperature between land and sea is diminishing. Because of the still remaining haze, the space seems wider than usual, with no wind turbines in view nor the industrial peninsula jutting out into the sea near Rotterdam. Sometimes so clear, as if I could easily walk towards that spot, now totally invisible, as the views from the beach were when I grew up here, when wind turbines did not pollute the horizon, and their blades did not slice through birds’ wings, killing them. The mist now hiding the monstrosities we have created to enable our prosperity, our technological progress. This evening I am that child again, innocent, enjoying the freedom of the sea, the waves, the birds and the clouds, which are gradually colouring pink and orange with the setting of the sun.

Once back where I started I join a friend and we watch the sunset enjoying a glass of wine, finishing it on the now cold sand after the beach café has to close. Alas, no spectacular and flaming red sunset, just pastel colours disappearing behind a bank of cloud on the horizon. Shivering now we return home. There will be many more sunsets, we are sure of that! And they will all be different and each of them beautiful in its own way.