Low Tide in January

The best thing about the ocean beach is it's size. There can be so many people on the beach, an entire population even, and yet you can stay hundreds of feet away from them, never cross paths or make eye contact at all. 

There are shells everywhere. They are a whole color in the landscape themselves.

I love that everyone I talk to, when they talk about going to the beach winter or summer, mentions how they have to put their feet in the water at least once. Like it's a blessing, a ritual important to the event of "going to the beach." I used to feel this way about Lake Erie, and my friends would complain about how it was too cold. Here, complaining about the cold is not a thing. The water is freezing, so what, you still go in it, duh. If you didn't, the sea gods would get angry.

This is a mailbox, in the middle of the corner where the ocean meets the sound. There's a notebook in it, and people write in it, whatever they want. There's a lot of inspirational, I'm grateful for my life shit. Because the ocean makes me feel that way too, I understand. 

But this is the proper way to sign the Atlantic Ocean Guestbook. I like that it was a girl who wrote this.

The tide was low, like a dirty club song. We walked down into the marshes with bare feet, and the sand was green and heavy, with the water shining in deep purples and browns. There were the tracks of bird twosteps and foxtrots everywhere. Dog tracks. Names of couples written in the sand from earlier in the day.

And then off in the distance were the dredgers. This is obviously my favorite photo of the lot. Dark heavy machines chugging away at the edge of the continent, fighting the shift of land masses.