Castle Walls
March 27, 2011
The shells are piled up like fortifications of a miniature military camp, strewn with rocks and broken rushes. Crunching along I’m surprised at how steady I am after a morning of doing taxes. Another few scrambles and I’m inches from the water. A fragment of hollow log, maybe an old piling or a piece of driftwood, stands upright in front of more rocks like a grand castle wall. Everything reminds me of walls today. Not the kind that trap and are impossible to climb, but the kind that are protective. For the first time in years there is no negative connotation.
Suddenly the wind blows something fierce and the light windbreaker I brought (“it’s fine, it’s fine”) feels like paper. So I do the only thing I can do. Stuff my hands in my pockets and go on. It has been months since we could see the surface of the beach. I’m not done yet.
The water is such a shade of blue that I want to take pictures at every turn. I’ve never seen it so richly sapphire. Relieved of ice, swept of snow, the world feels stable again. Things have just the right amount of weight to keep them where they should be, nothing more. For once I might too.
