Stuff I love #2 Lonely Beaches

Lonely beaches is the next thing I’d like to share my love of.  As a child, I spent a lot of time alone on the beach. It wasn’t a beach like you imagine, made of silky sand and lined with girls in bikinis. No, this was a beach of gravel and heavy rocks, all worn smooth by the endless tides. The plaintive call of the sea birds and the ceaseless caress of the waves on the stones were, and still are, hypnotic.

As I grew, I left the shores of the Bay of Fundy for the far western shores of BC. Over the years I have wandered along many a lonely beach on Vancouver Island and along the coast of the BC mainland. The song of the tides was the same, and the effect on my spirit also. It is a lullaby that strips away the stress and renews the soul.

Those were not the only beaches of stone for me. I have walked along the gravelly shores of Lake Superior, the barren beaches of the Arctic Ocean, and a number of them in the remote places of this Island I now call home, here in the North Atlantic. I can close my eyes right now and hear the soft splash of the waves on the shingle.

It is not only the gentle days that draw me. I have sat on the bluffs many times on a stormy day just to watch the big waves hurl themselves onto the unyielding rocks.  Somehow, that too, is soothing to me. I am a shore bird, you see. I have no desire to be a sailor, but I will be forever drawn to the shoreline of the world’s oceans. We can never be truly parted, the sea and I, for we dwell side by side on the tide line.