Just Me and the Beach

Yesterday I went to the beach at a fort about twenty minutes from home.  I was warned at the gate of impending severe weather.  You don't want to be on the beach during a New England thunderstorm.  No wonder I was the only one there.  Well, me and a few other people with unleashed dogs.  My kind of beach.  With the tide out I knew I could walk for 1/2 an hour in one direction and nearly to tap the sailboats floating in the nearby cove before I'd turn back and head for my car.  I love a low tide.  As I walked I thought about the science fiction story I am writing.  How would my main character meet the love of her life? What will the world be like fifty years from now?  My story is set in 2077.  Does that work? I wondered.  I will be long dead fifty-five years from now but maybe my story will live on.  I walked and walked as the damp air made my hair frizz up like a Q-Tip. I listened to the tugboat blasting its fog horn across the river.  Such peace before the storm. I thought about how much I like the days when the sun fails to shine and I walk the beach alone.  It makes me feels safe and quiet. I stopped to look at the lighthouse that guards the harbor.  I imagined the giant black rocks covered in seaweed fur, asleep and waiting half-buried for the tide to roll in.  I remembered walking a similar beach in not-so-good-times back in Seattle, my hometown, lightyears away but maybe not so much.  Life is so fleeting, I muse, as I leave the beach and head to my car.  But, not always.