Sand Smoke Salt

On Saturday, I had a stack of work assignments to catch up on.  So naturally, I went to the beach.

Alabama: the state with the best beaches you’ve never visited.  The sand is fine, powdery white, the water is clear, there are miles of condos and chain restaurants, and also wide swaths of open sand, state park that offers up an unobstructed view from marshy forest to the open Gulf.  It is the bather’s choice, which flavor of beach she or he prefers.

On this fine Saturday morning, the GPS leads me on a meandering drive south, from Daphne, Alabama, along country roads, past produce stands and lonely mailboxes, through a tollbooth that charges a startlingly high $3.50 for the privilege of driving less than a mile along a new connector, to Perdido Beach Boulevard, the four lane that hugs the coast along Gulf Shores all the way to Pensacola and beyond.  I park the Accord in the first public lot I come across, and carry a chair, a blanket, a hat, some sunscreen, and a book out to an open spot on the wide, noisy beach.  Blanket spread, sunscreen thickly applied, hat firmly jammed on head, I dip in the saltwater, and then arrange my dripping self in the camp chair, book in hand, and do not move until it is time to reapply sunscreen in an hour or so.

I find, as I get older, that I am more vigilant about sunscreen.

The day goes by.  I swim when hot, sun when cold, take very long walks, and read two books.  I meet no one, and no one talks to me.  I spend seven hours on the beach, the longest in a long time, since having my children, since marrying my husband, whose enthusiasm for sand and sun is not quite so unflagging as my own.

I do not wear my engagement ring.  I always worry about the diamond.  I do, however, wear my plain wedding band, and sunscreen notwithstanding, today on the third finger of my left hand there is a slim ring of paler skin.

Once, when I was younger, at a bar, a rude and boring young man grabbed my left hand to inspect for tan lines on the ring finger, checking for infidelity before he deigned to hit on me.  I chuckle when I think of that night in the bar, with my sister years ago.  That was in Virginia Beach.

While I am at the beach in Alabama on Saturday, reading my Margaret Maron mystery and drinking very warm tap water from a plastic bottle, a careless smoker tosses a cigarette, or a careless camper leaves a coal burning, or maybe nobody does anything wrong and it’s just the drought and the heat, but anyway after hours of staring into the beautiful Gulf, I get up to take a walk, and see a startling sight: a massive plume of smoke pouring from some kind of fire behind the row of high rise condos.  Something big is burning.  It burns the rest of the day, billows of dark and heavy-looking smoke filling the sky, and I go on a barefoot walk to find higher ground and see what it is.  I never do see any fire, but I can tell from the size that it is a forest fire, and I know that Gulf State Park is burning.  (I confirm it later online.  It’s now under control.)

It’s delightful, and odd, to be on the beach, beside the Gulf of Mexico which opens into the Atlantic Ocean, which connects us to (separates us from) Europe and Africa, South America.  To be beneath an ominous cloud of black smoke, filling the sky, spreading for miles and miles.  At the end of the day, I beat the sand out of my towel, brush off my feet, pack my items into my car, and drive reluctantly home, past shuttered produce stands, past lonely mailboxes, back toward my empty hotel room in Daphne, Alabama, my windows down, singing along to the radio, moving down the road in the summer twilight.