Summertime

       Now that winter is ending, can I still remember?

Here we were in our new found land. The sun rose early and set very late. It must have been summer, right? We were up with the birds and out walking along the Sea Wall. Then we went out and about to do our chores, equipping our new apartment. We walked miles into the downtown and back. We believe that that is good for our health, so we walk almost religiously. Usually with a short afternoon nap, and after a late lunch, it is almost time to get down to the beach so we can join the crowds of beautiful people enjoying the gorgeous sunsets we experience almost every day.

I was all in a tizzy. We had equipped our new apartment in Vancouver with two massive television screens, one in our living room and the other in the bedroom. Over the objections of my Bride, I insisted that we required them in order to live the kind of live we should. Obviously, it would be much more pleasant if we could do our watching in the late evenings, comfortably ensconced in our bed. Isn’t that obvious? What was there to discuss.  

“But it’s so big! I feel like I’m in the front row of a movie theatre.”

My Bride stared at me in exasperation, but I was adamant. The big box was staying. But this story is about life on the beach. Why are we talking about watching TV in bed.

This tide was in that day, covering the areas of beach we sometimes clamber over. We could hear the waters burbling to themselves in their satisfaction at having attained the foot of the Sea Wall. The young and old were testing their mettle in what looked like rather coolish water even though we were in mid-July. They were going in to swim by slow stages. It was warm, some areas in the region attaining record-high levels of temperature. We ate the sandwich supper we had prepared, sitting on a shaded bench, drinking in the vista of sun, sea, mountain range, and an array of sail boats and freighters off in the distance. The crowds of fellow sun-seekers swarmed around us. What a lovely way to spend an evening!

The point is –who has time to watch television? We are much too busy! What was I thinking when I bought those two massive screens?

We became beachcombers. We wanted to spend all our free time at the beach. And the beaches are everywhere in all directions. One can’t go far in a straight line in this city without coming across a waters-edge. Imagine the panorama!  Even where the sky-scraper apartments jostle on the back streets for a view of the water, large spaces between the buildings are park-like public areas. Is it any wonder that the population has almost doubled in twenty years?

This is the land of summertime. Of course, it rains for months. But sometimes, like this last year, we had a drought, and the summer went on and on. The shrubs and plants were crying out for rain, but the rain gods, were busy elsewhere, floods, hurricanes and destruction in the Caribbean and Florida, and the Canadian east coast. And now we have rain, rain, rain!

Life on the beach? Bring it on!