...
Guess he didn't drown.
...
OTHERS NOT SO LUCKY....
...
Ya know, there was a sneaker wave warning online... and... heavy sigh... I don't understand how people can walk on beaches like that. I mean, the beach, long and straight, and yer walkin' between the surf and dunes—dunes, not rocks—fine and dandy sugar candy, and you keep your eye on the waves, hightail it toward the dunes when you see it coming. It is exhilarating to walk on the beach when the surf is up. Redwood stumps bobbing in it like champagne corks. You get nuked with negative ions and it pounds out every vestige of stress that ever ravaged your meat sack. It's sea sex. I could go on for so long about it your scrolling finger would cramp up. Just thinking about it makes my heart try to bust out of my chest.
But, especially in winter, you don't take your eyes off the ball. Beside the regular unpredictability of the ocean, there is the fact that even though it's not storming on the beach, it is storming like the end of the world out to sea, and that is why the surf's up. This just drives me nuts because it is so obvious out there how to take care of yourself. It's not rocket science. But people go out there like they're on a trip to the mall... or the zoo. Even people who live near enough to know better.
...
86 and I went for one of our walks on Manchester Beach many winters ago. I guess it's about thirty miles south of where we lived. So it was an outing. The tide was in and the waves were ranging between ten and twenty feet high. The redwood stumps that usually litter that beach were bobbing in all that, being picked up, dragged out, thrown in the air. We usually walked about ten miles, shorter if it was just a pitstop on the way to or from the store, but that day we just hung near the wide spot in the dunes... in case of the need for a hasty retreat. It doesn't ruin it. It's so wonderful you can't stop yelling and moaning and laughing and hugging. You want to rip off your clothes and run out into it. I mean you wish it wouldn't kill you if you did.
.
I was snorkeling in Hawaii in about 4 feet of water. The bottom was sandy and the waves were 2 feet maximum.
ReplyDeleteSuddenly the sand on the bottom started boiling up and before I could analyze why, a huge wave broke over me, driving me hard into the bottom and dragging me, all tumbling and rolling, up onto the beach, well above the previous high water mark.
My ears were packed full of sand as was my swimming suit. I thought I had lost my diving mask until I realized it was stuck on top of my head like a suction cup. When I pulled it off water and sand ran down over my face.
My snorkel was nowhere to be found.
I'm thankful I had just gone to the sandy area rather than the coral bed I had previously been over.
Me too!
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking of me lying right next to the edge of the water at Hanalei Bay, Princeville, examining the brightly-colored itty fish swimming around in about the last two inches of it. Dead calm. I don't think there was anything like a tide even happening. It was like lying next to a fish tank. If a sneaker wave had come then it woulda got me. I was drunk on Chi Chi's. I hadn't figured out until a day later that I could drink them without the booze part and be even happier.