A particularly memorable beach sunrise

When light reaches out
Deerfield Beach, FL
December 2008
This photo has also been shared on Instagram

Call this one a throwback. I wrote the following passage on an early January morning in 2009 to accompany a vacation photo I had taken a few days earlier, just after the sun rose over a Florida beach.

Reading my words back today, I'm struck by how timely they still are. So here goes...and thanks in advance for indulging my little raiding-the-archives party:

Every year we've gone to Florida, I've talked about heading to the beach and catching a sunrise. And every year, it's remained just that: talk. I guess when you're on vacation, the last thing you want to do is drag yourself out of bed at 6 a.m. and head out in the dark.

This year, my wife insisted that I follow through. She also volunteered to join me, and wouldn't take no for an answer. Bless her.

So there we were, heading out in the pre-dawn murk, parking on a deserted beachfront street and planting lawn chairs into the cold sand. On the way there, I told her how little I cared about capturing the quintessential sunrise picture. Maybe I'm changing as I get older, but I no longer feel compelled to return home with a specific picture of anything. I get what I get, and whatever it is, it is. Just being beside her was enough for me.

So as you can see from the photo above, I didn't shoot a conventional view. I liked how the sun reached across the water. Wherever we sat, that reflection pointed at us. Never mind that shooting directly into the sun was photographically futile. It also didn't reflect how I felt that morning.

You feel small when you're on a quiet beach with someone who matters more to you than you've ever been able to express. You start thinking about what it all means, about why you're lucky to be in that place at that moment.

You know there's a real world behind the beach that's just filled with all kinds of sadness and strain. You know you'll have to get off the beach at some point and deal with it all.

But for now, it's enough to appreciate the moment for what it is: perfect.

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