a new personal best

Virginia and I rose at 3 am yesterday... and were out the door by 4 am to drive to Delaware and our remoted beaches there. We beat all the traffic to the bridge and were on my favorite beach by about 7:45 am.

We beach-combed and put three straggler horseshoe crabs back in the water, and sat on the sand and drank in the cerulean sky and the wind in the grasses. I picked up Cape May diamonds and bits of fossilized coral, and some sea glass for my collection.

My soul needed this day and the white clouds looked like dinner plates stacked along the horizon and all was well in that place in that moment. We spent five hours solid on that remote beach, with not one person in sight, and I healed a bit from the bruising that my world dishes out, til my mind calmed and stilled, and all the tasks that need my attention were pushed to the background.

It was a perfect day, one of the best I ever remember there with a gentle breeze blowing and the perfect temperature to be outside under a perfect blue dome of sky. With red-winged blackbirds trilling, and insects buzzing, the tide coming in in a wavy rush to get back to the pebbled beach, my glass was once again full to overflowing.

These days, of visual and sensory splendor are like money in the bank for me. The sights and sounds come back later when I am working in the studio on a painting, or putting the pieces of a collage together, and these memories pour into my work and art.

I am truly the luckiest person in the world.