Closing term and year-end grades,
printing out data for the data-collection gremlins, and assessing effort and
conduct points: A not-so-exciting way to
spend a Saturday. Luckily, my pal Jess
calls me and asks me to hang out. She
tempts with one of her world-famous homemade salads. No way can I refuse garden-fresh salad, plus
we’re going to concoct sangria with a moscato wine another friend gave me.
Suddenly my weekend doesn’t
suck anymore.
We occupy her sprawling,
freshly-mowed backyard while enjoying our lunch, then we sneak over the stone
wall to the neighbor’s pool. The sky
alternates between sunny and cloudy, and we hope to absorb some sun while
checking out the condition of the pool patio furniture. Another tall glass of sangria each, and we’ve
polished off the moscato, enjoyed some wine-laden fruit, and realized that the
pool water is still too chilly for a quick dunk.
Jess, who has just
returned from a semi-cross-country trek from Boston to Salt Lake City via car,
is adamant not to get into a vehicle any time soon, but she is equally adamant
to decorate her garden and the concrete apron around her house with beach
rocks. This is an endeavor we started
little by little three years ago. At
that time, the rocks were for a small section of flower garden off her brick
patio. Now, though, our ambitions are much
more grandiose.
“Let’s drive to the beach!”
she suggests suddenly. “We can get more
rocks.”
Hmmmm. The only problem with this is that the famous
sand sculpting contest is culminating near our preferred beach. The traffic is going to be a nightmare. We decide to wait until late afternoon to
make the trip, avoiding the major beach areas where news crews and crowds will
be.
When we arrive, we are
surprised to find a few people in the water since the air temperature at the
beach is clearly in the low sixties with moderate wind. We park first in our coveted spot (1913), and
are shocked and amused to discover that there are no rocks here. We peer further down the beach. About a quarter of a mile south are large
breakwall rocks with lots of smaller rocks (exactly what we’re looking for)
tucked around. We hop back into the car
and relocate to spot 2059, jumping out to peer down the staircase.
Score! Rocks on both sides!
We start filling bags with
rocks, and by “filling,” I mean that maybe a dozen rocks can fit into each bag
and still allow us to carry them back to the car. Two women are nearby, one smoking cigarettes
and throwing the filtered butts into the rocks and sand, the other letting a
dog run loose, informing us when it comes near us that “It nips.” (My translation: “If your little asshole dog
bites me, I’ll probably drop this bag of rocks on it.”)
Suddenly, Butt-Woman
scolds us. “You know, if you take all
the rocks from the beach, there won’t be any left for anyone else to enjoy.”
Um … excuse me? We are taking some rocks (not many), and
every damn time high tide rushes in here, tons of rocks are deposited from the
ocean onto the shore. Every. Damn. High. Tide.
As if her throwing butts in the sand and her friend’s dog doing doodies
all over the rocks is enhancing the beach experience.
In an attempt to get away
from the two nasty buzz-kills, we take a break and walk down to the water. We take off our flip-flops and wade into the
Atlantic, fully expecting that bone-chilling jolt that usually accompanies the
ocean this time of year this far north.
Instead, the water is surprisingly warm, warmer even than the neighbor’s
pool had been hours earlier. I roll my
capris up higher and wade in almost up to my knees. We understand now why people were swimming
when we arrived. The water is perfect.
In the end, we gather two
bins full of beach rocks, leaving hundreds of thousands of rocks behind. We decide to take the long way home and drive
down the coast and across the back roads so we can stop for homemade ice cream
at Benson’s. We are sitting on a bench
with our dishes of chocolate chip cookie dough (with dough chunks so large it’s
almost obscene) and fresh wild strawberry ice cream when a little boy arrives with
his father.
He scuffs his little feet
along the pea stones that make up the parking area. “Look, Daddy,” he exclaims, wide-eyed, “ROCKS!”
I turn to my pal and say,
only loudly enough for her ears, “Hey, we’ll open the back of the car if you
really want to see some rocks.”
We both smile and finish
up, heading back to her house just as dark is settling in. Luckily, the wind has picked up and the
temperature has dropped enough to stave off the mosquitoes. This allows us enough time to dump the beach
rocks along the side of the house, added to the ones we started with last
summer.
We are already planning
our next reconnaissance mission to the rocky beach shores. We’ll either go very early in the morning or
very late in the afternoon, and we will avoid Butt-Woman and Attack-Dog Lady at
all costs.
And we sincerely promise
that if the beach runs out of rocks and high tide yields nothing, we will cease
and desist and leave the beach damn-well enough alone.
