Wasting Time

I am always surprised at how quickly the weather changes out here, from day to day, from hour to hour.  This morning the temperature was 64 degrees, and the north wind had turned around overnight and was coming from the south.  The sunrise was again partially blocked by clouds but gorgeous just the same.

It was so warm and mild that after breakfast I returned to the dune-top deck and sat watching the clouds on the southern horizon, which were changing from minute to minute.  You can see the weather coming from a long way off out here, especially when it is approaching from over the ocean.  I could see dark vertical bands of rain under a turbulent line of clouds, black drapes dangling down onto the water below, and a bright blue window suddenly opening above, as if a sash had been pushed up.

Out there in the morning sky a long line of birds was flying from east to west in front of the pinks and purples in the sky.

I didn’t need Peterson’s Field Guide to Birds to tell me that these were eastern brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis), looking for breakfast in the ocean below.  They were all flying in the same direction, and I wondered how they returned to the east.  You could see their characteristic bills when some of them turned inland and flew overhead.

How glorious, to sit and listen to the ocean, to watch the clouds coming in, and to watch these pelicans floating by, sometimes soaring on unmoving wings.

I realized after a time that I had spent an hour out on the dune-top deck, simply watching and listening.  What a glorious waste of time.  Beach time.  It reminded me of Mary Oliver’s poem, The Summer Day, except that I was here surrounded by sand dunes instead of grassy fields.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?