Riding the Wave

We just returned from a sun soaked vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Twenty members on my wife's side of the family shared a magnificient beachfront mansion in the upscale town of Corolla. Pictured here is a zippy waverunner that I got up to 54 mph to cool off a blistering 95 degree day.

While vacationers endured some of the highest temperatures on record in North Carolina, our family was fortunate in that we rented a home with an inground pool and access to a private ocean approximately two hundred yards from the back door. Family members took turns cooking meals and sharing resources. The many children enjoyed beach volleyball, water polo, shopping, sightseeing, go-karts, flying kites, spectacular sunsets and sunrises, nightly game board play, fireworks on the beach, an organized treasure hunt, even swimming with fearless dolphins in the sea.

My vacation highlight involved finding myself absolutely alone on the beach one gorgeous partly cloudy afternoon. It seemed uncanny to find absolutely nobody as far as I could see on the private beach. The absence of distraction and outside noises proved deafening. So I parked my bones at the water's edge in the shallow water of a sand bar where I revisited a simpler life. For well over an hour, I marveled at the crashing waves and felt the gritty undertow try to claim me like quicksand. As a prevailing breeze swept my sparse hair, this foreign body stuck in island mud became one with Mother Nature. I emerged from the ocean thinking how blessed it is to simply be alive.