Maine

My family and I are spending a few days up in Maine in small beach town called Ogunquit. It looks like what you would imagine from a New England beach: rolling waves smashing against craggy rocks and bursting into coves. There is a path that goes along the beach from our hotel on to other small beachside towns. This morning, I took advantage of the gray, cloudy skies and went for a jog, something I love doing but somehow rarely find the time to do. There’s really something about the ocean air that makes everything more enjoyable, even the feeling of sweat gathering along my forehead. The view reminded me of the movie Life As a House, with Hayden Christianson (pre-Star Wars) and Kevin Klein. While there was no cliff sheer enough to jump off of into the water like in the movie, I imagined that if there were a sunset on the horizon (there wouldn’t be—we are, after all, on the Atlantic and not Pacific) and it were warmer (it wouldn’t be—it’s Maine), I would have had a strong urge to jump into the water.

I’ve been to a few beaches on the Mediterranean: the beach in Nice, France, even though it’s more like a gravel parking lot and not a beach, and the beaches in Marbella and Torremolinos, Spain. A week and a half ago, I was actually at the Torremolinos Beach, and I don’t think there has ever been a period in my life where I go to a beach more than once every few months (if not once every few years). It struck me that while the two beaches, Ogunquit and Torremolinos, are on opposite sides of an ocean, and the one in Spain is technically on the Mediterranean Sea, not the Atlantic, that I was looking at the same body of water. I know, existential moment that has been written about too many times, but it’s one of the first times that thought has hit me with the strength it did. If there’s ever anything to be compared from country to another, it should be the beaches. Some will have cliffs, others will have rocks, and even more others will just slowly fade into the waters to where the sand came from, but they all give that same, majestic feeling of smallness and, at the same time, unification.