{"id":163304,"date":"2025-10-05T08:44:27","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T12:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/?p=163304"},"modified":"2025-10-05T08:44:29","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T12:44:29","slug":"still-time-a-beach-sunset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/?p=163304","title":{"rendered":"Still Time – A Beach Sunset"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

5:30 PM at the beach. There is a small sailboat hugging the distant shore. It\u2019s going out while most boats head back in under a cloudy sky on this late Saturday afternoon. A patch of sea grass is all I can see of the sandbar where I kayak to. The tide is moving out and in a few hours, I know the sandy spit will emerge again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I am sitting on a beach chair. I rarely do this – sit in a spot on this beach alone – at least not on a chair I\u2019ve brought with the intention to sit. I usually come to kayak or walk, never just to sit. When I walk, I will pause and look out at the water, pick up a stone or shell I drop after a few steps. Today I am on a patch of sand where people regularly sit – often the same people in the same spots. They set up their chairs to read and roast in the sun away from lifeguards and families. It\u2019s not a place to swim as sea grass blocks access to the water.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A string of small waves is rolling in caused by the speeding motorboats heading home. Perhaps these boaters are hungry for dinner after a day spent on the water. This is what I imagine. Otherwise, the water is calm and I think about kayaking. It\u2019s tempting. My kayak is on the nearby rack and my paddle and life jacket are in the car. I love being on the water although I\u2019m a lazy paddler. I don\u2019t go far. Mostly just to that sandbar not currently visible. It should emerge in another few hours, a small stretch of sand where the oystercatchers hang out. I like to sit and swim there.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I took a walk before setting out my chair. I walk at this beach often.There are many serious walkers intent on achieving their steps. I am a little like that but I also come here to dream and stare at the horizon and take deep breaths. Before sitting, I walked past where my kayak sits on a rack, then out onto the pier where fishermen lean with their rods and beers. I usually stop for a few minutes at the end of the pier to look down at the water and out at the stretch of Long Island blocking the Atlantic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I pass the playground. I spent countless hours here watching my daughter climb the ropes, the slides and the wooden boat replica with bells to ring and a wheel to turn. She\u2019s 30 now and lives across the country. I walk through the tree-lined path where we once celebrated her birthday with her middle school pals. Rob and I cooked on the crusty grill there.The kids wandered off down the beach away from us chaperones. Molly remembers it as one of her best birthday parties and we did nothing but cook hot dogs and hamburgers and let them be wild. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I walked across the beach to be closer to the water lapping the shore. I come across multiple horseshoe crab carcasses upside down – legs up and still. I flip them over to make sure they\u2019re dead. One afternoon I walked this shoreline and came upon over a dozen of these prehistoric looking creatures upside down with legs flailing. I flipped them over as I went along and watched as they moved their armored bodies back into the waves. Today, none of them moved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The sun is breaking through a schmear of clouds. The sky below, a lemony yellow, readying for sunset. The days are shorter. While today had the warmth of a summer day, the sense of autumn prevails. I can see it in the light, the quality of the air. There\u2019s always a poignancy to the season changes, isn\u2019t there? I love summer and don\u2019t like being cold but I am sure if I lived in a warmer climate I would miss these changes I have lived with all my life. I am happy to visit my daughter in California during winter to get my fix of humming birds and year-round flowers. But there\u2019s something that balances me in these changes in light, leaves, temperature – the temporary freezing of the earth. I take none of it for granted anymore and feel challenged to meet the seasons. Even in winter I come here to this shoreline, bundled up against the winds to follow the tides and sunsets through the season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just beyond a small boat house is an event space and I can hear the sounds of a wedding and the couple, Mr. and Mrs. Quinn, being introduced. Now, as if on cue from my thoughts, a guitar\/vocalist begins to sing a Carole King song: Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall – all you\u2019ve got to do is call and I\u2019ll be there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I look out at the water. There\u2019s a kayaker next to the grass near my still submerged sandbar. They are not paddling, just floating. Like I do. Hypnotized by the movement of the grass, I relax as the boat lifts and lowers, rocking gently. I cannot see from here but I imagine the kayaker doing what I do: I let my hands fall alongside the boat and into the water, still warm from summer. Are they letting the tide bring them back to shore? I watch and see they are drifting, pushed away from the gently waving grasses of our sandbar. Not paddling. I recognize the sweetness of giving it over to nature, waiting until the last moments of the sun\u2019s light before returning to shore.There is still time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

5:30 PM at the beach. There is a small sailboat hugging the distant shore. It\u2019s going out while most boats head back in under a cloudy sky on this late Saturday afternoon. A patch of sea grass is all I can see of the sandbar where I kayak to. The tide is moving out and … Continue reading Still Time – A Beach Sunset<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[12,19],"class_list":["post-163304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seasonal-musings","tag-nature","tag-time"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPzTS-GtW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163307,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163304\/revisions\/163307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}