Down the beach, Rincon Puerto Rico

I must have walked down this beach hundreds of times over the past five years. You would think that after that time I would have seen everything that was to be seen. It would seem that the little creek, the old pilings on the abandoned pier, the houses and fences, the trees, the moods of the sky and the sea would all have yielded up their mystery.

So today I went out just to stretch my legs and feel some sand grit in between my toes... and the cool warm of the salt water. Down the very strand of beach that I have walked so many times.

I think now that if I had the opportunity to walk this beach thousands of times... perhaps an infinity of times to the end of the world it would not be enough to see with understanding all that was on my small strand.



I stopped by the little creek... now running with fresh/brackish water as it is almost the wet season now and we do have our afternoon showers. I saw this tangle of bleached branches. Caught up in the creek. Bleached by the sun and by the sea coming up into the mouth of the creek. I liked the shape and the jumble of the branches. I liked the bleached bones of these tree parts. I saw this very image that you see now even before the camera was up and working. I have never seen such an assembly exactly as this was... in all the time I have walked this beach... and there it was.



Coming back, turning about to come back to the Lemontree... on my way I saw these footprints. Not mine. Some of those in the line of prints made by another beachcomber were already wiped out by the rising tide. But not these. These prints were there for me to see. A trace of another. I will leave my own traces... some may see them, some not, most not, perhaps only will someone walking with me, close, see the impressions there for only the briefest of moments before the inexorable tide washes them clean, except for there memory in the mind of another.



Last, this ramp, likely a boat ramp, the wood beginning to splinter and the paint chip away. it leads up to a yard, a hidden yard behind a concrete fence that you would need to walk up to and peer over. Of course, I wonder what happens on the other side of the ramp. This was closed to me as the gate is securely locked. Perhaps one day it will be open. I wonder if I will be there at the foot of the ramp, waiting and ready on the beach for the gate to open? Or... will I be up the beach somewhere... unwilling to leave my small patch of sand to see what is on the other side of the gate?