You're shooting the wrong way, moron

With the sun at my back...
Cocoa Beach, FL
December 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

While everyone shoots toward the horizon, I'm the idiot facing the other way. Why?

Directional challenges notwithstanding, I'm out here in the early morning for two reasons:

1) I don't enjoy hot days on the beach. I’m not particularly fond of crowds or oppressive heat, so the prospect of wedging myself in between towel-flicking groups of teens and middle-aged men spilling out of their Speedos while they fish crumpled Camel cigarettes out of their cracked blue-and-yellow pleather Adidas gym bags doesn’t rank high on my priority list. Goodness, this makes me seem old. So be it.

2) We were only in Cocoa Beach for the night, and would be leaving just after breakfast. So I needed to log some quiet time by the ocean before we loaded Stella up and hit the road.

Thankfully early mornings, when the beach is nearly empty, have always been my jam. And this morning, just south of where NASA and its partners launch rockets - and soon humans - into space, was a perfect example of why I love places like this. As I shot the sunrise, I dug my toes into the cool sand, and wished I could somehow capture, or freeze in time, what that felt like.

Once the requisite sunrise photos were taken, I turned 180 degrees and focused up the beach instead. I love these moments, when the low-angled golden sun paints shadowy evidence of all who were once here. Doubtless in a few hours it’ll all get jumbled again under the feet of countless new visitors to this place, but for now, it feels frozen in time.

I could feel through my toes the warmth slowly displacing the coolness in the sand, a sign that my quiet break from the rest of the planet would soon have to end. So I finished shooting and headed back, promising myself I'd return soon.

Almost forgot to answer that why-I-face-the-opposite-direction question. Simple: I'd rather tell my own stories, which sometimes means going where others don't. Or looking where they aren't.

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