Edisto Beach SP
I had to move campsites today. Edisto Beach, and most of the campsites along the coast, are very popular and many sites fill up months, sometimes a full year in advance. I can’t plan that far ahead. What if I die? I don’t want to lose that money on a reservation I can’t keep.
Fortunately, I just had to move from site 23 to 25, two spots over. It was a quick process to take down the camper, move, and reset–40 mins. I did that at 10:30 a.m., and at 1:56, while I was on a work meeting on Zoom outside, enjoying the shade of a palmetto tree, a camper pulled in and the driver and his wife were looking at me funny. I suddenly got a sinking feeling. I looked and noticed I was at site 20. “Are you sure you’re at the right site?” the woman asked. I apologized, then let her know I had another meeting in 3 minutes, and she said, “Well, we need to get in here, so we’ll give you a few minutes.”
There was nothing to do but skip the meeting, which is not good. This was probably the first time in 2 weeks that I’ve gotten angry, mostly at myself. I could not believe I didn’t check the site number. I swear I did when I arrived on Sunday, that the site had been #25, I was sure of it. But site 25 had now moved two spots in the other direction.
I moved fast, and 25 minutes later I was in my new spot and back online. Then my dad called, saying my mom was worried they hadn’t heard from me. Cell reception is spotty here, so I missed a call yesterday at some point. Dad got an acoustic electric guitar from my mom for Christmas, and he had just hooked it up to some speakers and was pretty excited to be getting into the electric guitar game at age 77. He turned it up and demonstrated but the phone didn’t really translate. I said I’d call later, then I got meeting details from my coworkers and I went fishing on the beach.
I didn’t catch anything again, but sooner or later I will. It was 73 and sunny today, and the waves were rolling in heavy with a rhythm that filled your ears and was relaxing, meditative, almost like controlled breathing. If the earth has lungs, they’re here, I think, on the shores of its oceans. Pretty soon I didn’t care about that meeting or catching fish, except I kind of still cared about catching fish. Every 15-20 minutes I’d move my chair up the beach as the tide kept rising.
Soon a little girl and her grandma came to play in the waves. The little girl was probably 3 and a half, maybe 4, and she was having so much fun as the waves crashed in front of her. She’d go out a little ways, maybe 5 inches of water, and if her grandma didn’t scold her, she’d go out a little farther, then when a big wave rolled over and bubbled toward her she’d turn and retreat, giggling uncontrollably. She was vibrating with excitement, just tap dancing and laughing and having the time of her life. The waves were more than twice her height, and she was tempting them, but I figured if a wave knocked her down and grabbed her, I could get there before her grandma to save her, and maybe I’d even knock the grandma down so I could save her and get all the glory. But really, there weren’t too many people on the beach, so the adulation would be limited in any case.
I looked out into the sea and saw dolphins, their fins arching out of the water, about five or six of them. I closed my eyes and listened. I opened them and watched the sunset, the mist of the waves creating a hovering haze of orange on the horizon, as the sun brought its fire down to warm another world. Then I was hungry, and I returned to the camper and made dinner.
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