The absent-minded professor finds his Walden Pond

Yesterday, the fourth day of my stay, we finally made it to the beach. As people from our group finished setting up our tents and started getting wasted, I appraised the sinking sun behind me and announced I was going to take a dip. The islanders were not impressed. I gulped the last of my Coors, looked one last time from shoreline to sunset, and decided I could no longer contain my eagerness.

I trod through the sand, down to the waves, ducked underneath several fishing lines drawn taut between the ocean and 8-foot reels stuck vertically in the sand. The sound of crashing waves drowned out everything in white noise — a far cry from Corpus Christi’s beaches with wind whipping through dunes and gulls constantly calling for attention overhead.

The tide pulled me out into the waves, where I bobbed on my back, staring at the tranquility of the clouds. I thought of a great many transcendental questions while my pasty torso floated atop the waves like a beacon of enlightenment. The ocean stretched to infinity before me, was the only sound around me, felt like it lifted me on 20-foot swells. Then my foot scraped a rock on the sea floor. I turned my head and saw that I was barely ten yards off the beach. As I let a wave lift me up effortlessly and set me down gingerly on the beach, I marvelled at how such a monumental force could also be so deceptively gentle. No wonder, I thought, the poets have for so long looked to the sea for inspiration.

It was only after I'd retraced my lonely footprints in the sand and returned to the fraternal bonfire that I realized my cell phone was in my pocket.

(If anyone could send me Adam Dorris's or Malati's phone number ASAP, I'd greatly appreciate it...)