I am inland helping a friend today so cannot be at the beach. But I thought I would share some thoughts on a recent sunrise.
Sunrise
one lone star in the dark sky
a hint of rose on the horizon
the promise of a new day
the sea, like molten pewter
flowing toward the shore
the wet sand stretches out ahead of me
like a sheet of glass
seashells, dotted here and there
sea birds catch an early morning snack
glow on the horizon grows
orange ball rises from the sea
sun up
By special request, I will post regular beach sunrise photos, so that you too can enjoy the awesome majesty and infinite variety.
This is April 10, 2014; Cocoa Beach, Florida.
It was a blustery day and storms threatened. As the sun weakly rose above the dense cloud banks, a man was at work sweeping the sand. At first I thought he was raking the sand smooth, repairing the beach from someone’s sand castle the day before. when I got closer I found he was creating a large heart in the sand.
Brent of Better Together Weddings was creating the stage for a couple’s dream ceremony at the beach. They braved the wind and the stormy skies and were rewarded with the sun brightening for a little while.
Best wishes!
Since it is only a block or so away, I head to the beach almost every morning to watch the sunrise. I never know what the dawn will offer. Will the cool wind or threat of rain mean I have the beach virtually to myself or will there be a big audience for the sun’s debut? Will I find a calm sea and a sky washed in soft pastels or a churning surf under steely blue clouds? Will I see more pelicans, gulls, and sand runners or birds of the human variety?
This day the wind was blowing and the surf pounding — prefect for a little kite flying.
Look like fun?
“Sunrise, sunset…swiftly flow the days”
When you start the day walking the beach at sunrise and you end it with a view like this, everything in between pales in comparison. Each day brings a new palette so wonderous, I would hate to ever take a single day for granted.
When you hang your hat in a place as touristy as Cocoa Beach, what appears to be the center of sun and fun in NE Florida, the natural landscape is limited pretty much to looking out over the Atlantic, which is the view from this rainbow of wooden beach chairs.
Papa palm, Mama palm, and Baby palm
No Goldilocks in sight.
Being a peninsula between two big bodies of water, storms in Florida can come out of nowhere and be pretty severe. 
This storm even brought down the hurricane shutters. All clear now though.
Late winter dreary, cloudy and cold
Driving toward spring
Endless prairie, dotted by white barns and farms
Thin sliver of light hints at promise of sun and warmth
Rivers and lakes – water sparkling like diamonds
Meander through forests – sun flickering through the trees
Eagles soar overhead as red tailed hawk eyes me
Clumps of daffodils nod to a coming spring
Wiggle and waggle southward
Narrow roads with no shoulders
Houses with wide porches, doors open, folks rockin’
A church on every corner like gas stations back home
Signs of spring – grass greening
Apple and almond trees shimmering white
Wild plum and redbuds – splashes of color amidst dark, leafless trees
Creeks tumble over rocky beds, rushing with snow melt
Over Mont Eagle, down toward Nickajack Lake
Warm sunshine entices, stop to hike
Cloudland Canyon, home of the Cherokee
Waterfalls over ancient rock faces – awe inspiring
Winter fingers reach out to nip at fingers and nose
Run, run, run to warmth
Meander lost
Georgia stretches on and on at break neck speed
Florida at last – slow lane once more
Cracker style houses, horse farms, and forest green
Live oaks drip with Spanish moss
Wildflowers paint the roadside – purple and pink, yellow and white
Pines and palmettos
Give way to salt marsh and sawgrass
Ocean views and beach stretching on and on
Journey’s end
In a favorite book of mine, “Blue Highways: A Journey into America,” William Least Heat-Moon wrote, “Had I gone looking for some particular place rather than any place I’d never have found this spring under the sycamores.”
That describes the beauty of taking the scenic route, getting off the Interstate — typically miles and miles and miles of straight, flat, and boring — and onto secondary roads, county highways, or better yet, those thin, wiggly lines on the map that wind around a lake, over a river, or through the forest.
Case in point, if you drive the Interstate North to South through Indiana, you travel through miles and miles of ancient lake bed, now flat land, however, go a few miles West and you traverse hills and rivers, past huge rock formations, Amish farms, and small towns — a wonderland that the average traveler, bad mouthing the boring drive, never realized existed.
At the beginning of his journey, Heat-Moon wondered if “Maybe the road could provide a therapy through observation of the ordinary and obvious, a means whereby the outer eye opens an inner one.”
I can attest to the truth of those words. Instead of flying past everything, seeing nothing, “meandering” the back roads forces you to slow down, see the hawk soar over the trees, hear the water babble in the creek, and snatch glimpses of another slice of life — horses grazing, children playing, the old folks rockin’ in the shade of their porch.
Instead of billboards advertising gas prices or the next fast food restaurant or tourist attraction, homemade signs announcing “maters and taters” or asking “Are you willing to take a chance with your soul?” You literally go over the river and through the woods, whether to grandmother’s house or not. And you breathe — not only slower, as the stress of everyday life melts away, but cleaner, filled with the scent of apple blossoms, fresh grass, crunchy leaves, tumbling water, or pine.
Heat-Moon shares his father’s philosophy that “any traveler who misses the journey misses about all he’s going to get,” that a man’s (or woman’s) observations and curiosity, make and remake them.
Taking five full days to travel from Wisconsin to central Florida may seem like an eternity to some. “I could do it in 2 ten-hour days!,” they boast. This isn’t Name that Tune, so I will not respond with how fast I could drive it because for me, it is the journey that matters.
This was not a true meander; I had a particular place to be in a “reasonable” amount of time. That time expectation and the cold, blustery weather kept me moving southward, hundreds of miles a day. In the end, it was more like Heat-Moon describes as “turning the windshield into a movie screen in which I, the viewer, did the moving while the subject held still.”
Since each day, I took time to stop, look, and listen — watching wildlife, lunching by pristine waters, hiking trails past awe-inspiring rock faces and to roaring waterfalls, sitting by the campfire, and star gazing — I did not mind watching the movie that unfolded before me at times. In the end it was a good journey.
The Adventures of Blue Bear 