One blinking, quivering ray of sunlight presses through the clouds layered over the Northeast and it seems as if the world is straining towards this supposed offering of color and warmth. The chlorophyll has gone from the leaves and grass, and as the foliage hibernates, I can see far into the hills. It is not a colorful sight, and I cringe back while I listen to the wind hollowly swinging through the brittle grey tree branches.
Wisps of snow swirl and drop hard: big, heavy flakes that stick together as they hurtle sideways, downwards. When they coat the grey expanses, piling up high, it will be beautiful. It will be beautiful each time it snows for the next four months, as icicles drip from every railing and ice glosses the barren fields. It is the time in between that is trying, when the grey settles in to blanket everything once again, a canopy of clouds that hovers with heavy disdain to the sun.
Somewhere about 1,000 miles south of here, the tide is falling back over sand and stone, relinquishing the tidal zone once again to the sustaining heat of the sun. The days are longer, and still pools of seawater refract light from among the rocks. A scuttling here or there from a hermit crab or a flurry from a seabird distracts from the sound of the waves: ebb, flow, the splash of a fish, industrial silence.
The foliage is still green here, and does not spend half of the year hibernating like its northern counterparts; the plants here have had opportunity all year to grow dense and lush. You will not find wiry shrubs here, and there is no fight for sunlight, only for a secure place among the dunes and shifting sands.
There is no need to rush through a place like this, only to wake up every morning to watch the sunrise, to spend days playing in the shallow waters and paddle boarding in exploration, to spend afternoons dozing on the beach, swaying in the soft fabric of a hammock. It feels natural to spend evenings eating dinner around a fire, adding the cackling spits of heat and catching sap to the swaying background sound of breaking waves. All of this, as a prelude to nights sleeping under the stars, protected from the critters and wind inside my coziest of tents. It is a humble lifestyle, yet one that has always been special to me, a comfort among the fast pace of life.
It seems in the end an easy decision: I will put my sup boards up on my car and my camping gear in the trunk, then I will drive south, meandering until I reach the tropics.
of the water and the sea 