Every car which passes by slows abruptly, nearing a halt, as the passengers take a long, greedy look at the beautiful sandy shore meeting the crashing waves, perfect shades of gray and blue. To them, this is a view they can enjoy from their car, maybe a potential spot for surfing or a nice place to relax after a hike across the road in Robinson’s Woods. To me, it is my thinking spot, one of the only places I have ever experienced which allows my mind to go truly blank, a meditative void I yearn to return to immediately from the moment I leave until I inevitably come back.

Throughout most of my life I have found going to the beach a miserable experience, the reason for which I can only guess, as I have never been able to quite pinpoint it. Perhaps it was that in middle school I was fairly overweight. It was never to a dangerous or extremely unhealthy degree, but regardless I was self conscious. I would never be in public without a shirt, and I certainly didn’t want to wear a shirt to the beach while my friends wore just swim trunks. Maybe the reason was that I could barely swim, and thus tried to avoid any activities with water in fear that others would learn my secret. Most likely it was a mix of the two, afraid that people would think my inability to swim was caused by the shape I was in and not simply by the fact that I had never fully learned. Whatever the reasons were, I simply avoided beaches whenever possible, and reasoned to myself that they were boring. After all, what could you really even do at a beach? It was just sand and water.

Nowadays, I have no shame in admitting that my swimming abilities are below the average teenager’s. There is no technique to the way I swim, and it is fueled exclusively by my cardiovascular endurance, which is enough to make it through most situations. Still,  until recently I had never found the love of beaches which so many people have.

That all changed a few months ago. I was on a run, planning on going about 5 miles on Shore Road. This was nothing particularly serious or planned, so when at about the 2 mile mark I found myself next to the beach I had driven by almost every day for a year on my way to the gym, I decided to pause and check it out. I had only ever seen glimpses from my car, rarely for more than a few seconds except when the car in front of me insisted on slowing to the pace of a turtle to get a picture, yet here it was, just across the road.

When finally the cars stopped coming from both directions, I crossed, and entered a world of pure bliss. Not three steps from that same road, and yet I could not hear a single car. I looked to my left, a young woman was sitting there, taking photographs of the water with a camera set up on a tripod.  On the water, there were surfers, at least five of them, in wetsuits. The waves were perfect, bringing each of the surfers up and down in a rhythmic pattern, then allowing a brief period of still water before rising up again. I took my headphones out of my ears and sat down for what was meant to be just a moment.

The sounds and the warmth and the calm of the beach lulled me nearly to sleep. An hour later, something jolted me out of my trance, a random passerby walked in front of me, breaking my line of sight to the water for the first time. I felt refreshed, and as I stood up my head felt clear. Meditation is another skill I never practiced when I was younger, considering it a waste of time and far too difficult for someone with as much energy as me, but all of the sudden I understood it completely. The pause in my run became a full stop, and I walked the rest of the way home. I put my headphones back in, and slowly let the music drown out my thoughts once more. 

A week later, as soon as the weekend began I found the time to get out of the house and run to the beach again. The weather was starting to shift already, and it was noticeably colder. A jacket and long pants replaced the shorts and a t-shirt of last week. As the beach came into view again, I noticed that there were far fewer surfers, the group from before was now just one or two, and while last week the beach had been populated by couples and dog-walkers, today it was just me.

Seeing the lack of company, I worried that the beach would not be as perfect today as it was last week. Perhaps everyone else had found the same to be true and given up, but still I crossed the road and sat down, ready to accept that the first time had been a fluke.

The peacefulness of the beach once more entered my mind, as I slipped off into a meditative state. This time, with no one to walk in front of me and interrupt my calm, I stayed longer than an hour. I pondered everything that I had worried about over the week, and it all seemed to make sense for the first time. To those who think epiphanies are only in movies, I would counter with the realizations I have had and continue to have sitting on the sand of that beach. It is truly a thing of wonder to see the sources of worry in your life melt away as you experience the beauty of nature.

Is there something special about this beach? Probably not, after all it is just water and sand, and being positioned directly across from a busy road drives away many who would consider taking a closer look. Maybe, though, that’s how all beaches start out. A peaceful, idyllic spot visited by no one until someone discovers their beauty, and through that draws others, too many others. The beach becomes crowded and loses its charm. After all, with someone walking in front of you or bumping into you constantly it is impossible to stay in the trance. So, for these reasons, I will not give the name of this beach in this essay. It is obvious already to anyone who knows it, or takes the time to give a quick google search for the things I have mentioned nearby, but if that is you, reader, I ask one thing. Please do not disrupt my thinking spot.