Awhile back when I was in the throes of a separation, I decided I needed to re-assess my life; to sort out who I was and where I was going.  My life had changed drastically.  My wife had evolved from a normal person into someone exhibiting negative acting out behavior, most of which was directed against me.  My personal finances had deteriorated from mere accounting problems to potential legal offenses.  I’d lost contact with both my stepsons from my second marriage, and felt as if I’d also lost touch with my own son and daughter from my first.

I started walking the beach. 

Durand Beach is an isolated stretch along the southern shore of Great Lake Ontario, near the City of Rochester, New York, where I live. The drive from my rented duplex – in Rochester, to the beach, is mostly expressway.  Rather than go to the beach after work, fight traffic and arrive there more stressed out than I already was, I decided to start setting my alarm clock very early and drive to the beach to watch the sun rise.

I was excited about my new routine: getting up in the dark, driving to the Bagel Bin at nearby Twelve Corners, getting a fresh coffee and bagel to go, even before they officially opened for the day – they were still filling bagfuls of wholesale orders – then hopping on the expressway and driving the eight miles to Durand Beach. 

I then parked my little Dodge Dakota pickup truck on the shoulder of Lake Shore Boulevard at the east end of the beach and worked my way sideways down the short but steep hill to the beach.  The public beach averages maybe twenty paces wide – narrower here, wider there, from the bottom of the hill to the water's edge, and it's about a mile long.  I walked to the west end where a pile of driftwood designated the beginning of a private beach, and back again to my truck.  I walked at a casual pace along the edge of the water, just out of reach of the lapping waves, where the damp sand was most solid under my feet.

I navigated around tree limbs washed ashore, dead fish carcasses, and several small streams that crossed the beach to the lake, coming from under the road through stone aqueducts, from the wooded ponds on the other side of the highway.  Some days I could simply step over these streams.  In wet weather, they grew wide and deep enough that I had to either find rocks or fallen tree branches to step across.  It generally took about an hour to walk to one end of the beach and back.

The fresh air, the smell of open water and the flurry and crying of the gulls always in the background had an invigorating, almost medicinal effect on me.  It caused me to forget about my daily routine, one that I’d spent decades mastering, one that seemed too similar to that of a frenzied rodent running speedily in no particular direction.  I wondered if this was what the gulls were crying out about, in sheer exhilaration over being out here and free from everything else.  And my fresh coffee stimulated me to go a step further and think about non-routine thing – things I hadn't had time to reflect on in years.  Lie – decades! 

On the very first day at the beach it was as if a missing piece of my thought programming had been switched to “on.”  Thoughts and insights about life in general, and mine in particular, began seeping into my consciousness, then flowing, then pouring out, thick and fast.  Realizations, many of which were so profound – indeed, arresting, that I felt I needed to write them down immediately – lest I forget them, so I could re-hash and explore them later. 

There on the beach I had nothing to write with.  So I scratched some notes into the side of my Styrofoam coffee cup with my chewed down thumbnail.  I finished the coffee, flattened the cup and made some more notes, until the cup was completely hen-scratched.  Back at my truck, I tossed the cup on the floor of the cab.  The next day I found myself scratching up another cup, and the next.  I drove, walked, thought, scratched and tossed.  Each day a new notated cup joined others on the floor of my truck. 

A week-and-a-half into this I noticed the floor was getting cluttered, so I collected the cups and brought them into my house.  I looked at the crushed, sandy, coffee-stained cups sitting there on my kitchen counter.  At first the idea of transcribing these notes seemed overwhelming and I was momentarily tempted to just throw the cups away, which, up to this time, was typical of my follow-through on personal projects. 

Instead, I thought, "No, I'm going to do things differently," and I rinsed off the cups in the kitchen sink and examined the hen scratches.  I began recalling the thoughts that stimulated my thumbnail shorthand.  There, at the counter I roughly interpreted and expanded my rudimentary beach thoughts in a little spiral note pad.  Finishing transcribing that first pile of Styrofoam notes into fuller sentences, I stood back to examine my work.  Instead of satisfying me, it got me thinking further.  Fired up now, I brought my note pad to my office, where, first thing – before I started my real work, I entered these notes into my computer, expanding on them still further.

Following are the entries from the first few weeks of my original journal, to which I will continue adding on a regular basis.

Beachcombing Journal

Journal: Day two at the beach

This morning at the beach I notice a bright color shining from a tangle of dull green seaweed.  I reach down and pull out a fishing lure.  It's probably for salmon or some other large game fish they go after on the Great Lakes, since it's as big as a dill pickle.  Then I find another one, and another.  They are brightly painted in Dayglo-intensity orange, green and purple.  I pull out my empty bagel bag and by the time I get back to my car I've filled it with five fishing lures, two spent shotgun shells, a dozen deflated black balloons – still tied in a bunch with a pink ribbon – and a syringe!

Back home I wash everything off and lay it out on my kitchen counter, thinking I might make some kind of anti-nature techno-sculpture.  As I stand staring at this conglomeration of unrelated stuff trying to find a common denominator – when I should really be heading to work – I realize the reason I brought it home in the first place is to justify having gone to the beach.  It isn't enough that going to the beach helps me relax, forget about work, organize my thoughts and simply enjoy myself.  No.  I have to bring something back with me, tangible proof of my trip, something physical on which to lean, or I will have wasted an hour's worth of time and won't go to heaven. 

I'm bringing old responses to this new situation.  I decide to make a mobile using just the lures, complete with their hooks and barbs, as a reminder to myself.  If I am tempted to reach for the mobile – like an old habit – I will realize there may be sharp hooks and I'll stop.

Journal: Day four at the beach

Standing here on the deserted southern shore of Lake Ontario at sunrise, reflecting on my life, which right now is between the end of a marriage and the beginning of something else but I don't know what, I feel in limbo.  Like I'm floundering between the very end of a profound experience - a poignant summer vacation where I've met a special person or visited a special place, and the first day of whatever may come next - the autumn of reality.  I'm not ready for that yet.  Coming to the beach allows me to put myself in a holding pattern, to wallow in this limbo.  Summer may be gone but here I can keep autumn from coming.  Here I can retreat daily to post-August 31st and pre-September 1st: August 32nd. 

Journal: Day five at the beach

Once here on the beach, it's surprisingly easy to forget about my daily life.  I'm not talking just about my failed marriage, I'm talking about all the other parts of my life, right now held at bay as close as my pickup truck parked just up the beachside hill.  The shapes, sounds and smells at the beach are foreign to my routine life and cause me to come out of myself, to behold them, and process the idea of them.

The beach seemed stark when I first came here; now I see it as full of stimulation, surprisingly much of which I find relevant to my life in an almost infinite number of analogous situations that have been waiting to move from my subconscious, to my consciousness, to be processed and, hopefully, understood.

For example, this morning the sky over Ontario is packed full of white clouds, and the red glow from the not yet risen sun fills the sky slowly and sporadically turning those clouds a living red.  This uneven bleeding of deep red into the colorless sky reminds me of when I was a boy and my mother brought home from the grocery store clear plastic pouches of pure white oleomargarine.  There were red coloring pellets inside the pliable pouches and my little brother and I used to argue over who got to knead the bags and squeeze the color into the oleo.  I had forgotten all about that.

I win the argument this morning and walk along the beach closing and opening my eyes, making new picture frames of an ever-changing oleomargarine sunrise.