One Last Summer Afternoon...

Yes, summer has been over, in a very real sense, for a while now. Unofficially, it ends on Labor Day weekend (at least in the United States). Officially, it will end this coming weekend, although it has been chilly enough in terms of temperatures to suggest that it has been over now for a while.

Before getting to the beach, we had found a little place that sold fresh seafood, and decided to go ahead and pay the place a visit. I got fresh red snappers, and a side order of Buffalo-style bites- kind of bite sized servings of fish cooked as if they were Buffalo wings). It was a very good meal, and made us both thankful that we had not settled for the typical fast food type of place. 

Now, I was ready for the beach, and wondered if I would in fact swim. It seemed to be sunny, and the temperatures had not exactly felt accommodating the previous week, although I was not sure about this day.

Still, all that said, I got a day in at the beach last week with my girlfriend, and got one last one in this week, yesterday, the 20th.

Last week, I actually went into the water for my final swim of this warm season, as it turns out.

Today, I had intended to go one more time. Only thing is, it was pretty damn cold. The waves were rough. I was feeling sick. All of those factors, and perhaps one or two others, secured that this afternoon would not see me swimming.

That's right. I had been looking forward to this one last beach trip of the year since last week's trip to the beach specifically for swimming, and after all of that, there was not going to be any swimming.

Did I wuss out?

Perhaps a little bit, although all that I stated before is actually true! I swear!!

Still, it was very cool time. It was surprisingly chilly, and being the big dope that I was, I had gone woefully unprepared, wearing swimming trunks and a t-shirt. Instead of just cool or a bit chilly, I began to feel cold, to the point of even shivering.

My brother noticed, and lent me his hooded sweatshirt, thankfully. That helped quite a bit, and I was even able to dip my feet in water relatively comfortably (the first time had triggered my shivering).

There were dead jellyfish, and what I presume to have been pieces of jellyfish, scattered throughout the beach. Was this normal? Is September the beginning of the season when jellyfish begin to die, at least locally? It was interesting. There was one jellyfish that was particularly large, and full. You could actually see it's shape entire. Yes, it was actually fascinating.

It also reminded me of a book that I read last year: Bill Bryson's "In a Sunburned Country", where he talks about all of the hideous and scary wildlife that Australia has been blessed with. On top of one of the hottest habitable (but mostly uninhabited) regions known to humanity, they have the extra added "benefit" of some of the deadliest creatures known to humankind. If memory serves correctly, the saltwater crocodile that he writes about has been considered the deadliest creature of all, and they are incredibly fast. Also, they can pop out at you out of nowhere. You could be looking into a seemingly still pool of water, when all of a sudden, this thing will jump out at you and have you for lunch. Literally. But Australia also has both the world's most poisonous snakes and spiders.

Yet, according to Bryson, none of those actually are the deadliest creature in Australia. Nope, the deadliest one, according to him, is the box jellyfish. It is incredibly dangerous, enough so that it can kill a human being with the amount of poison that it possesses. It should be noted that it does not necessarily automatically kill a human being, because if treated properly, then you can indeed survive such an attack. But it could, and not only could it merely kill a human being, but it's sting is one of the most excruciating forms of pain that we know of. Each tentacles (and there are evidently thousands and thousands of these tiny tentacles on each one) has something like a small amount of poison that can inject you with a needle like tentacle. The best description that he gives, at one point, is by someone who worked with a dead box jellyfish, who accidentally touched one by accident. He said that each tiny tentacle felt like a cigarette burning. When these things grab onto you, they leave a kind of tiger stripe of sorts (although, I presume, the stripes are red). These are horrifying, horrifying creatures.

Not that these dead jellyfish were those noted horrors. Not even close. But still, jellyfish are not creatures that you want to get into contact with, even if dead, to my knowledge. But they were dead, and all that remained is to avoid them. However, they were very fascinating to look at. Again, those were my first real live jellyfish, dead or alive, and even if this might sound stupid, I felt glad to have seen them in person.

So, back to the beach trip. After spending a few minutes examining these jelly corpses that littered the beach, I went back up to higher ground, intent on reading. So, I lay down, looking out on the horizon stretching out before me, watching the ebb and flow of the waves crashing, watching the breathing of the earth, seemingly. Suddenly, fatigue was over me, and the realization that I had gotten maybe all of two to three hours of sleep tops dawned on me. So, I set up my backpack as a makeshift pillow and, evidently, promptly fell asleep. Not just a nap, mind you. But out cold.

This may sound stupid, admittedly, but this, too, was something that I had always wanted to do: simply fall asleep to the sound of the waves of the ocean, and then wake up to the site of the ocean, breathing in that ocean air. I did, and it really was nice and unique - although my back was aching, and my fatigue was still strong. Also, most importantly, it was getting chillier, if not outright colder. My feet were really cold, and there seemed nothing to be done to warm them up. Finally, I was shivering again.

I got up, and dipped my feet in the water again. This time, the water actually felt warm - warmer than it did outside. There was a temptation one last time to just go for that swim, but it seemed unwise, and I mentally struck down the idea rather quickly. There had been a couple of people swimming earlier, and now there was a guy kind of laying there on his surfboard, pretty well out there, although he was also in full body suit. But the temptation was gone. It was late (when I awoke, it was around 6:15 or 6:30), and darkness would soon descent. With it, temperatures would plummet, and officially summer or not, it already felt plenty cold for me.

So, I got my books out, instead, and started reading a bit, while my brother walked along the beach a bit.

It grew dark, and we began to wrap things up. We walked back and sat for a while on the boardwalk, talking. There were high school kids, locals, who were bs'ing. They were a bit annoying, but in a predictable way.

Across the street, there was a 7-11, and my  brother treated me to a cup of coffee. We sat on a bench on the boardwalk, facing the ocean as the sky continued to darken, now almost to full night. Yet the waves were so strong, that we could see the white from the crashing waves quite clearly and distinctly. Plus, we could definitely hear it. But the sun had already set on the day, and on the summer, evidently. At least for another year, it had.

The coffee did me good, warmed me up. Not my feet - that was a lost cause, evidently. It would take hours before they truly warmed up.

Strange. I had come here to enjoy one last summer day on the beach, and it feels more like I spent my first real fall day there instead. Still, it was a good time, and I look forward to returning next year, during a new warm cycle, on the other side of the approaching fall and winter....