Escape to the Beach

The Salty Charms of Summer

I just returned from a few days in the Free State of Florida, where beaches manage to distract people from the idiotic things going on in the rest of the world. Making things even sweeter, I was in North Florida, where our Navy’s beloved jets still roar overhead—Go Navy!

Those of us who spend time in more raucous towns need such escapes. We get away and find out that it’s fun to sit on the beach and listen to country music, dive under waves, fish some ponds, and throw the football with our kids. There’s no need to wear fancy clothes; while tasteful attire is required on the golf course, you can get by with bare feet or flip flops at most places. People watching is a sport there, too—and occasionally disturbing, given the new rules for who can wear bikinis. At the end of a warm day, you still find sand encrusted on your scalp, and it feels healthy.

Nature, for this reason, is a great equalizer among people, surpassing all the doomed efforts to “unite” people under the left’s panoply of identity flags and “we’re in this together” mantras. Beaches, mountains, lakes—all sit in a beauty that suspends one’s political obsessions and angst, if only briefly. The people around you form a happy fellowship of sunbathers, swimmers, surfers, hikers, or anglers; all wear more a glow of sunshine, and less a tint of political red or blue.

Years ago, when my children were small, summer’s city heat weighed on my spirit. It was hot, “everyone else” went to camp or left town, and the city offered all the 92-degree charm of concrete and car exhaust. For a bit of nature, we’d hit the dirty Chattahoochee or its trails, where a bout of rain renders them clay quagmires. Undeterred, I drove my kids to pools, parks and libraries all summer —with the finale at Chick-fil-A, the coveted “summer reading” milkshake prize. But I still pined for clear water, open skies, and barefoot fun.

In a twist of serendipity, my husband’s Navy duty required an annual two-week stay in my native Florida. We stayed in a residential area on the coast, far from touristy condo strips. I traded my pools and parks routine for free access to the top facility in town—the Atlantic Ocean.

Back in Atlanta, our outdoor summertime attractions were nice clubs, city pools, or crowded water parks—all good, but bound by concrete. But at the beach, the ocean commanded a prominence that outranked even the best of manmade pleasures. We now had endless water, alligators, sharks, boats, and crabs. We had sunrise, sunset and jubilant breezes. Planks washed up from a sunken ship, and a whale washed up from its travels. Pirate stories lurked at the horizon. We ran barefoot on the golf course at night. We tracked stars in the evenings from the lifeguard stand.

As I did in Atlanta, I took my kids to the library there—not a top vacation activity, but this was a happy and bright place, not a dark, municipal book cave. The children’s section featured an exquisite, large dollhouse donated by a Navy family. The friendly retirees who manned the library’s bookstore kept it stocked with an impressive array of leather-bound classics, military history books and puzzles. They curated a room that supplied our home with giant books about World War II, and the collected works of Jane Austen; they showed us how to bring our brains to the beach.

This beach library boasted other charms outside; a boardwalk encircled a lake full of hungry snapping turtles, and a garden of boxwoods formed a children’s maze. I relished every moment there, where the happy industry of retirees made a magical summer pairing of books and nature. I discovered how to maintain an intelligent mind while living in the carefree winds of the beach.

The active minds weren’t just at the library; they were found beachside, too. For a couple summers in our earlier years, my husband and I observed a well-dressed elderly man who sat in the shade of our beach pavilion daily. He always wore a CVN-70 hat, having served on the carrier Carl Vinson; he spent hours reading a thick book, always a work of history or politics. His frailty somehow withstood the July heat of his faithful pavilion duty. We spoke to him a few times and considered him a living monument to the Greatest Generation. One year, his corner perch was finally empty; to this day, we wonder if our children will ever see such a stately old veteran, reading into his 90’s, still stationed in an ocean breeze.

Another man, a transplant from the midwest, still runs his age-defying Labrador seven miles on the beach every morning. He spends the rest of his day operating on hearts as a surgeon at a nearby hospital. But, like many thoughtful early risers, he starts his day with reflection—this one simply mirrored on the water.

Perhaps it’s also the remnant of patriotic and faithful people that make our favorite beach a respite from the rough and tumble. It’s a Navy town, so many of its retirees have logged miles on aircraft carriers or submarines, and they still remember why America is great. They go to church, too; I’m not Catholic, but I’m always glad to see the police officer stop traffic on A1A to manage cars pouring out of mass, a reminder that churches here haven’t yet been abandoned.

For most of us, beach time is spent in artificial conditions, divorced from job responsibilities and routines, giving vacation spots an aura of golden ease. In reality, no matter where you go, trials and troubles still find a place to call home. The ocean, accordingly, finds its limits, too; it can only do so much to soften the blazing insanity that dominates our headlines and turns fellow humans into caricatures. Like death and taxes, these are realities that neither wasting away in Margaritaville nor other beachside frivolities can erase.

But I’ve spent enough time there to know that these older beach dwellers aren’t marinating in the heaviness of political drama, crime, or lonely online scrolls. For saltwater spirits, life hovers between dunes and duties, doused in healthy sweat with a touch of Jimmy Buffet. For some, a walk on the beach starts a day spent immersed in hard work or good books; for others, the ocean is a watering hole at the end of the day. Humble and wealthy alike soak in its God-given moods of peace or tumult, in differing tides and a variety of callings, but equally sandy and refreshed.

Maybe sun-baked souls seem a bit less polished, but they’re nonetheless more content; they outswim the heat and follow the tides in a chair. They aren’t raking it in; they’re taking it in— it’s the recipe for summer’s rest; life gains new perspective as the lucky old sun goes down.