Well Sea

A quick trip to see the ocean often reveals the simplest possible truths. You might hear seagulls, ride in the historic Mt. Washington steam train, climb said mountain in a car (though without racing) and, in the banality of basic tourism, find a few moments worth remembering: that most essential something which seems to live in the water, in the sound of waves, in the gulls and the smells of salt and seaweed. It lingers long after, like the faintest echo of the surf you might hear in a seashell, or in the wind through a window, or through the rows of Iowa corn a thousand miles from the water.

In the quaint beach shops of North America, alongside surfboards, t-shirts, fudge candy, and the smells of coffee and cheap milk, there lingers a distinct scent of desperation. The shops cluster at one end of each beach, like seaweed left strewn there, while between them stretch multi-million-dollar summer homes, condos, hotels like teeth along the rim of the bay. The people want to live here, but only in the summer. They don’t want to work the shops. Who will serve fudge when the last condo takes over the last quaint walking street, and the last surf-shop has finished its metamorphosis into a distant Wal-Mart?

A little further away, in a swamp of mosquitos if you can find one, there might spread some dense checkerboard of recreational vehicles, where those wealthy enough to buy one of those behemoth’s on wheels, but not wealthy enough for one of the summer houses, might take temporary refuge in their pursuit of an escape. But there does not seem to be any place to escape among the vehicles packed in like beans in a can, stewing in the smells of BBQ and the sounds of the neighbor’s Netfl

Despite all of this, there is the sea. It will be here when the last shop closes. There will be seaweed on the shore when the condos have gone. Maybe then, someone will want to sell fudge.