A Day at the Beach

Yesterday, I did something that I rarely ever do - spent the day at a beach. Okay, well, not the entire day, but the afternoon and evening.

Now, normally, that is something that I do rarely, despite the hot summers and the relatively close proximity of the infamous Jersey Beach . You see, I am one of those people with fair skin, which is to say that my normal complexion is pasty year round. I don't so much tan as burn. It seems either I look like Casper , with nearly translucent skin, or I look like the walking, talking red lobster.

Still, I have never gone an entire year without getting sun burnt once, and figured why would this year be any different? Plus, although spending an entire day at the beach, taking a dip in the waves, but mostly just laying there, doing nothing, and working on my tan, tends to be seen as a very enticing thing for most people (the phrase “a day at the beach” comes to mind), this just isn't my "thing", if you will. Yes, most people seem to really enjoy that, and for a great percentage of the people, that is their foremost idea of a vacation to have a good time in.

Me, I think of skin cancer and all of those warnings about spending too much time at the beach, under the sun. Also, there are other unpleasant realities with the beach, including the massive traffic jams to and from (unless you specifically choose to go at a time when that will not be an issue, but most people do not seem to want to wake up at three in the morning in order to get a head start on their day at the beach). Then, there is the problem of the beaches being overcrowded, as well as the other perks that go along with that, such as overpriced and low quality food and souvenir stands, parking issues, and being charged entirely too much to actually enter the beach.

Overall, there just seem to be a lot of annoyances and inconveniences, and for someone like me, who is not interested in working on a tan, those inconveniences quickly detract too much from the actual beach-going experience. I am of the mind that the ocean should not be considered private property. Yet, people have their beach front properties, and they block others from entering (or try their best to). Many townships straddling the beach have little to offer in terms of revenue, so they take advantage of the one thing that they really have to offer- that being the ocean – and charge an arm and a leg for everything, like they are trying to make up for almost an entire calendar year’s worth of generating virtually nothing, by squeezing every possible thing that they can from out of town visitors and beach goers.

In other words, people ruin it. On it's own, the shore is beautiful beyond compare, and is perfect for relaxing and dreaming of things beyond the everyday.

But too often, when you go, you have to endure the everyday (all of those stresses that I just mentioned) in order to finally get to the beach. Almost like a prerequisite, and frankly, it should not be that way.

There are places where the coast is open and available, where a conscious effort was made not to allow too much build up right by the coast. There are some in Europe . There are some in other countries, and there are some in this country, as well. I have even seen it, personally, on a trip to the Pacific Northwest, where there are, if memory serves correctly, hundreds of miles of coastline that has been allowed to remain completely natural, and not built up or privatized.

But I presently live in built up New Jersey , and there really is not anything like that here to speak of. We even have television shows about the Jersey Shore , and they are none too flattering.

Yet, the beach is the beach, and once there, it is beautiful, and a pleasure. I specifically visited the beach at Belmar. Although the beach is not something I normally do, especially on a hot day like the one that I actually went on, it was very pleasant. It seemed somehow not quite as hot as everywhere else, and when the evening came, I swear it cooled off beautifully, and you could even feel a slight breeze in the evening.

I was in the water, allowing the waves to crash over me, sometimes swimming with them and allowing them to do with me as they will (without going too far with this), while the sunset beyond the shore was spectacular. The pastel colors in the sky were perfect, and it was just such a joy to be there.

It is indeed a privilege, and a privilege beyond price, beyond this society's baser instincts of "ownership". It is a natural site, and nothing that human beings created, or should be allowed to lock away and prevent people from coming to of their own accord.