Sunday, March 14, 2021

A day at the (frozen) beach

Don't get too close
Port Stanley, ON
March 2021
This photo originally shared on Instagram

It's a difficult equation to balance in your mind: Stay home, avoid unnecessary contact, go out only when you absolutely NEED to be out there. Food. Medical care. Essential work.

It seems so logical: do everything you can to stay away from others, maximize your safety, and keep your head down until this historic scourge is over. Survival. Safety.

And yet. After a year of hunkering down, the head says stay, but the heart says wander.

So today we wandered. Not far, mind you. To Port Stanley, a delightful village on Lake Erie's north shore, and a prominent destination for Londoners looking for a quick getaway to the beach.

Did we HAVE to? No. Did it take us outside our comfort zone? Of course. Did we studiously avoid strangers to the point of near-rudeness? Certainly. Are we glad we went? I'm only sorry we didn't go sooner.

The winds whipped across the still-frozen beachfront and chilled us to the bone. But we still managed to steal some photos amid the blinding sun and pick up some takeout from Mackie's, a beloved restaurant that's been around for 110 years and literally defines this place where land meets water. Add in some Shaws ice cream on the way home and you've got the makings of a day that almost seemed normal.

My wife took this picture of me being me. Our daughter called it "a good day", and she's absolutely spot-on. We all need good days, days where we make tiny memories involving sand, sun, ice, wind, waves, food that's not necessarily nutritious but is nonetheless essential, small businesses that need some folks to wander if they're going to survive, and random moments in the car with some of the most important people in the world.

In fact, no matter how hard all of this has become, we can't stop making memories, whatever form they may take.

Because when all this is over, memories will be the only thing we have left. Pandemic or no pandemic, that's kinda how life works, anyway.

#port #stanley #portstanley #beach #great #lake #erie #ldnont #wind #weather #wx #nature #photography #apple #iphone #iphone11 #shotoniphone #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #lifeinthemargins #family #everything

No comments: