Impermanent

I must have taken 100 photographs yesterday for the transient photo challenge: everything about the beach is impermanent. Waves roll in, crash, spend out, and they are gone. Shells clack together and crumble in the pounding surf. Sea grass clumps wash ashore, then lift and move as waves wash over the flat sand. Surfers follow the swells: they appear when there are waves, and vanish when the sea is flat. Shore birds follow the tides, follow the fish, follow the tiny coquina clams that surface in the swash zone, then burrow back into the sand when the water recedes.

I photographed waves, shells, surfers, turtle nests. I photographed froth as it moved over the sand, sand as it moved over my toes, my toes as they were washed clean in fizzy bubble water.

I photographed surfers bobbing, dozens of them clustered in the same tiny strip of shallows, where the sand under the surface is just right to break waves for surfing. I photographed surfers standing on the shore, boards under their arms, pointing at sets coming in. I photographed surfers standing up on waves.

What is most transient of all, though, most impermanent to me and my family right now, is the family condo we are staying in. This is our final vacation here before the condo is sold. My husband came here for the first time the year he was born, and has come nearly every summer in the 44 years since that first visit. Our children have grown up with this condo and this beach, too, and I wanted to capture as much as I could before it’s gone from us.