Layered clouds sag with the weight of the storm passing out to sea. The water chops. White caps collide without rhyme or reason. Thin patches of blue rinse through gray sky. The air has cooled. The season is changing.

Winds bend beach grass greened from yesterday’s rain – anchoring shifting sands to dunes swallowing barrier fences – foolish sticks wrapped with wire to slow erosion. The same that sank Georges Bank, and someday will cover everything like Atlantis.

But for now, for our lifetime, and that of our children and their children – the crooked arm of Cape Cod’s shifting sands is our refuge – our home flexing beyond the mantle of the mainland. Benched atop the dunes of Nauset, I sit wondering at the horizon: a crack of clearing light squeezed between green-pitched water and gray-swirled sky.

Strangers come and go while I sit, notebook open, pen scratching, toes dug into warm sand, and my friend waiting patiently, her red collar still damp from yesterday’s walk. I watch the staggered parade connected by a common destination and distinguished by their reasons. The lone walker. The binocular holder. The reader. The side by side couple. The surf rod carrier.

A wooden guard stand floats magically above the beach grass, gliding its way toward the safety of the parking lot where it will sit with the others to wait for summer. As the stand approaches the break in the dunes, a yellow backhoe with its forklift rolling on large tires deflated for the sand is revealed. One task on today’s list for the driver – a symbolic sighting for witnessing strangers: the seasonal changing of the guard.

On the sister bench across the boardwalk a stranger sits hooded with an open book – reading.

Another stranger and his dog approach from the parking lot. The beach is open again for our best friends. He says good morning from the end of the leash, his friend straining toward the water.

A third just above the tide line opens her pink blanket to the wind and lets it settle flat. Then she sits facing the water, her back to the world, her legs folded in, her arms resting with hands turned open to the sky. She is still and nearly invisible against the pitching ocean and clouded horizon. Breathe in. Breathe out. The waves tumbling onto the sand, their skyward reach collapsed by gravity.

We are here together, bouncing off of each other like the waves pitching in the shifting winds. Wandering beyond the reach of the rush, the responsibilities, the schedules, the lists, the phone calls, the emails, the texts.  

We have benched ourselves. Some as a reward for decades of work. Some by good fortune, their lives evolving to a place where they are free to come and go in life as they please. Some on a break from their twisting journey. Some as part of their routine. Each of us drawn to the wave-washed sideline for our own reasons: to breathe, to see horizon, to smell salt, to hear waves, to feel wind, to remember, to imagine . . .  to be. 

For all of us the beach calls with its emptiness. Not the carnival call of summer. Not the stormy call of winter. A quieter gesture – like a friend waving to us through the crowd, pointing to a seat saved. An invitation to fill empty space with companionship – a gift for having made the effort to show up.

I close my notebook, slip my pen into my pocket, and nudge my friend – it is time. We have time this morning – inspired by our strangers, I feel permission to wander. Who knows when we will have another open morning when everything that must be done can wait. 

I take myself off the bench. The absence of expecting voices, the uncertainty of what is next, the lack of any clear path, and the wide open space before me raises questions I have forgotten to ask – lost in work for so many years. What do you love? What have you learned to do well? What deepens your sleep? Why are you here, now, in this place? Who needs you? Why? What happens if we break from the prescribed – if we live without consideration for the scorekeepers?

I walk with my friend down onto the sand and reach into my pocket. She sits, staring up. I throw her favorite ball. She runs – her paws digging deep, her legs galloping til she overruns the ball, circles, grabs, then lifts it to me – again, please throw it again. 

I smile, reach down, grab the ball, and throw. 

I know there will be days when life will keep us from the beach. Even today is filled with things we must do. But for now, I am happy to throw and walk with my friend, hoping we will find a way to make it back here tomorrow – so I can throw her ball again and again.