Alexandersmap

    Tag: Plum Island

    • A Walk on Plum Island Beach

      There are different ways to walk a beach. Some walks are meditative, some are merely workouts, and some are clearly meant for people-watching. The reasons why we walk lead us eventually to where and when. Each beach offers a new lens through which we may see the world and ourselves.

      My bride is a beach bunny at heart, and it turns out our pup is too. We’ve been taking her to a local New Hampshire beach for long walks and she’s grown more courageous with each bold step. She’s no water dog and won’t plunge in like our Labrador retriever would, but she’ll delightfully chase waves and bite at the sea foam. Her joy is ours, and walks on the beach have become a more frequent way of getting her away from the permanent mud season of never-winter-as-it-once-was that is our new reality.

      If Hampton Beach is a long, flat walk on firm sand, Plum Island Beach offers an experience more like Cape Cod National Seashore: soft dune sand plunging steeply in places to the ocean breakers. The dunes aren’t nearly as tall as Cape Cod, but the walk can be just as wonderful. On one end is the turbulent mouth of the Merrimack River, on the other are the dunes and swirling sandbars of Plum Island State Park reaching out into Ipswich Bay. In between are rows of homes ranging from beach shacks to McMansion: beach edition luxury homes. As with everywhere exclusive, money determines the future state of the real estate here. But Mother Nature has a say too.

      Plum Island is not an easy place to walk nor an easy place to live compared to other beaches in the area. Just as wealthy homeowners in the Hamptons on Long Island struggle with beach erosion and the fickle protectiveness of sand dunes, the people who dare to build homes on Plum Island face the same challenges. One day you’re living in paradise, the next you’re living through a nightmare of storm surge and wave action. It’s an audacious act to live in such places, emphasized with insurance rates that discourage the casual investor. It takes disposable income to have such homes in such places as this.

      Plum Island State Park prohibits dogs, so a walk to the end with the pup was out of the question, but there was plenty of beach available for our power trio. Walking towards the Merrimack River, we met a couple walking three dogs of their own. As soon as they said their dog’s name I knew it was a locally-famous author but kept it to myself. We all seek out the beach for our own reasons, and often it’s to get away from who we are further inland. We had a small reunion on the return and went our separate ways.

      Every beach has its own story to tell, just as each beach walker does. I wonder sometimes why we aren’t walking more beaches, and promised myself to add beaches to the collection of mountain summits, waterfalls and historic sites I’m collecting on my life experience list. The time bucket for such activity is now, isn’t it? We must venture out while we’re blessed with good health and a desire to do something with it. Perhaps we’ll see you out there too?

    • I Must Get Back To The Sea

      “The sea 
         isn’t a place
           but a fact, and
             a mystery”
      – Mary Oliver, The Waves

      It’s been less than two weeks since I’ve visited the ocean, and it feels like forever.  We’re deep into the holidays now, and the end of the quarter, the end of the year and the end of the decade.  There’s no time for the ocean right now, but on the other hand there’s no better time for the ocean.  I’m planning at least two trips to the ocean in the next week, for exercise and sanity and a bit of winter beach solitude.  I’m close enough to salt water that it’s not going to break either the time or financial banks.

      I noticed a lot of fresh water experiences in 2019, Lake Michigan, Lake Ontario and exploring a double-digit number of waterfalls in New York, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Scotland. I’m hoping 2020 brings even more opportunities to ponder the mysteries of the ocean.  I know I have a good head start teed up for New Year’s Day.  For today, I’m using this Mary Oliver quote as inspiration for a four of my favorite moments with salt water in 2019.  

      Camusdarach Beach: My bucket list beach, and I’m grateful I had the chance to check this box in 2019. Sure, it was a rainy November day, but it was still as beautiful as I’d hoped it would be. I’m already plotting a return.

      Plum Island: My go-to winter beach, close to home and blissfully isolated on a cold weekday. My lunchtime walk was my favorite long walk on a beach this year.

      Sailing on Fayaway: I shake my head thinking I only went sailing once this year, which was the fewest number of times on a sailboat I’ve had in years. I’m grateful for the crew of Fayaway for giving me the opportunity to sail with them. I’ll get out more in 2020, I promise myself.

      Buzzards Bay: Home away from home. The sunsets are stunning, but I’m partial to the sunrises. Swimming in Buzzards Bay doesn’t offer surf action, but it makes up for it with warm, salty water you can float in forever. At least I wish sometimes it were forever. The last swim of the year is always bittersweet, and, like sailing, I always hope for more next year.

      We only have so many days, where do you prioritize the time you have? If I’ve learned anything in reviewing the year, it’s that I need to double down on my time with salt water. On the beach, on an oceanside trail, on a boat, or swimming in it, I must get back to the sea.

    • Beach Sand Reset

      This was one of the most unproductive mornings I’ve had in some time.  I wrote and deleted two blog posts because they were crap.  Work slid sideways and never got back on the runway.  Out of sorts with just about everything this morning.  These things happen, and I tried working through it for awhile…  with limited success.  So I decided to take a walk at lunch, and decided it had been too long since I’ve walked the beach on Plum Island.  Walking on the beach is great any time of year, but my favorite time is winter.  I saw three people and two dogs the entire walk, benefiting greatly in my isolation for walking in the middle of a work day in winter.  But that’s why I went there.

      The surf was up, offering a wonderful soundtrack to compliment the rhythmic swish, swish of my feet marching across damp, cold sand.  The beach is a traveling art show, with sand sculptures carved by the wind and waves moving from place to place, always different from the last exhibit.  Snow from last night clumped in patches here and there with greatest success on driftwood and the dune grass.  Tiny sand ridges formed from receding waves created Etch A Sketch-like graffiti on the beach; here in this moment, but gone with the wind and high tide.  Driftwood and sea glass and millions of shells mixed into the sand, clumped into patterns by the previous high tide.  I continued my march with purpose, aiming for the Mouth of the Merrimack River.  This was about a 2 1/2 mile round trip, which fit in with the amount of time I had while serving as a good workout with the give of the sand.

      I came across a child’s footprints in the sand running in circles, as children do, going this way and that; directionless.  And I thought to myself, that’s what brought me to the beach today too.  I’d begun the day with high hopes, got distracted by figuring out the logistics of getting from here to the tropics with no real time to work with, and found myself spiraling into a completely unproductive morning.  So the beach was a reset, a chance to clear my head and figure things out.  Ten year plans that break into what am I doing next week kind of thinking.  And some of that got done, but mostly I checked another 10K box and regained my focus on writing.  And when I got back to my work settled back into a groove with that too.  Good things happen when you get outside.  And when outside is a quiet beach all the better.

    • Sand, Snow, Sea and Shells

      Winter brings seclusion to the beach.  After all, who’s really lingering on a beach in January anyway?  Well, I am when the opportunity presents itself.  I’m not a beach person in that I don’t see any point in lying on the sand while the sun cooks your skin.  And yet I’m a beach person in that I love to walk on the beach, especially near the surf, and especially when I may find solitude.  Since I’m not wealthy enough to own a private beach, my options for solitude are early in the morning and in the off-season.  A beach in the Northeast doesn’t get much more off-season than January.

      January beach time brings together seclusion, sand, snow, sea and shells.  If that’s not an attractive alliteration I’m not sure what is.  I seek out solitude because I like to think, and I like to re-charge my batteries through nature and walking.  I welcome the occasional sniff from a dog running free with it’s human.  I take a picture that strikes my fancy.  Sometimes I pick up a shell or driftwood or sea glass.  I try to get my steps in for the day.  And I think.  Being alone with your thoughts seems to be less of a thing nowadays.  People escape into their devices, their TV shows, politics, celebrity gossip or sports.  Some escape into a bottle or religion or drugs or exercise programs.  I’m not interested in escape.  I’m interested in enjoying the ride while I’m on this earth.  Now.  Not deferred to some retirement or vacation in the future.

      Tim Ferriss calls this living the lifestyle of the New Rich.  Time and mobility.  I’ve tried over the last decade to build my career around this NR lifestyle.  While I haven’t pulled off the rich part, I’ve generally lived in such a way that I’ve had the freedom to do what I want to do most of the time.  Generally that means being able to see my kids play sports or attending other milestones in their lives, but sometimes it means taking a walk along a cliff in Portugal, or seeing a sunrise from the easternmost point in Newfoundland, or taking a walk on the beach on Plum Island on a random Tuesday.

      Through Ferriss and Ryan Holiday I’ve found myself reading more stoicism lately.  There are three phrases in Latin that I’m trying to embrace.  Amor fati, or “a love of fate”, Memento mori, or “remember that you have to die” and of course the old standby Carpe Diem, or “seize the day”.  Each day I’m trying to live a complete life.  Some days I accomplish more than in others, and I’m always seeking improvement.  Life, like the sand, shells and snow on a beach, is fleeting and ever-changing.  All we’re guaranteed is now.  So if now is all I’ve got, I might as well walk on a beach in January.

       

    • Red #2

      Standing watch at the Mouth of the Merrimack River is Red # 2.  Red # 2 is a navigational buoy that rides out some of the most violent conditions on the East Coast.  Red # 2 is not as well known as MR, which is the first red navigational buoy on the approach to the Merrimack River and the one that most boats set their course to.  MR is the glamor buoy in this part of the Gulf of Maine.  Important, much discussed by boaters and the mark of choice on the GPS.  MR is not just a navigational buoy, it’s a destination.

      Such fame is not in the cards for Red # 2.  But I’d contend that Red # 2 is responsible for more safe passages through the Mouth of the Merrimack than any other.  Set beyond the Salisbury Jetty, Red # 2 marks the channel around the treacherous sand bars beyond the jetty.  Without Red # 2 boaters would be tempted to cut the corner around the jetty on their way north.  These pictures shows the waves breaking over the sandbar between the jetty and our friend Red # 2.  On a calm day a boater wouldn’t realize just how dangerous a tight course around the jetty would be.  So thank you Red # 2, you’re tops with me.