I grew up in the landlocked Midwest, with the nearest ocean at least a thousand miles away. Now that I live just minutes from the beach, I’m not about to waste it. Usually I travel alone to the Long Island Sound, a large sliver sandwiched between Connecticut and Long Island, New York, whose waters are typically brown and sometimes black. But those of us who patronize its shorelines are accustomed to these colors. It’s okay. The beach is still the beach.

In the off season sometimes I’m entirely alone with the sea, breathing in the fresh and silent air with only seagulls and piping plovers flitting about the scenery. What wintertime most often brings, though, is a little more company than this. Large dogs who need to run and play bring their owners along to watch. Visitors who have traveled some distance carry cameras and occasionally pose in front of the freezing water. Other people, whom I guess to be regulars like myself, jog and walk along the sand and the boardwalk. No matter how cold the day may be, I believe everyone must be secretly loving it.

Today I was down by the shoreline and wanted to head to the beach, but it was sleeting so I couldn’t. Actually I could have, but it would have been thoroughly miserable. Hitting the beach is weather dependent in the summer too, though. No matter the season, I always want to have the ocean nearby, to remind me that there’s more to the earth than land and sky.

Why Am I The Only One Here? Wintertime at the Beach is a post from: Solo Travel Tales and Tips from the Middle East and Elsewhere on the Globe