Photo Essay: At the Water’s Edge
February 15, 2020
One early April day a couple of years ago, I was walking on the beach at the Sandy Point State Reservation located at the southern tip of Plum Island, Massachusetts. I’ve been going to the beach at Sandy Point since I was a young child. As I walked along the beach, I noticed a small boy standing at the water’s edge watching the shallow waves coming towards him. There’s something very special about watching children at play on the beach. If like me, you grew up near the beach, the vision of a young child at the water’s edge takes you back to your own childhood.
I remember standing at the water’s edge in that same way, looking at the water working its way towards me and then swirling around my feet. There’s a moment when we reach the water’s edge, no matter how old we are, that we stand pensively watching the water in a state of wonder. And then we look to one side or the other, and we start to move along the lapping waves, because we are curious why each wave disperses along the beach in a different way.
Something catches our eye a few steps along the way. We stop, we look out to where the waves are little larger. It is mesmerizing. The ocean. We feel its pull. We watch the waves, we marvel about the way the sun glitters on the water. The same sense of wonder in a small child is in each of us when we connect with nature.
Suddenly we remember you’re not alone on the beach. We can lose our self standing at the water’s edge, ruminating on the ever changing beauty of the ocean. But now, it’s time to play…
And then in midst of our play, we’re running from the water.
And suddenly we are alone again standing solemnly along with water’s edge.
And, we sink back into deep contemplation as the lapping water swirls around our feet.
These are the moments in life, the images that remain in our minds, that tell our story. We all carry stories within us, young or old. A child standing at the water’s edge on an early spring day could easily evoke thousands of different stories. On this day, as I stood behind the lens of my Nikon on the beach at Sandy Point, I remembered how many times I have felt a sense of wonder, marveled at the beauty of the ocean and ran and danced at the water’s edge.
