Pensacola Nature Journal

Bad things happen to good people. It’s a universal law. For instance, my younger sister who’s a senior in high school, tore her ACL and has to rehab for the entire season. But sometimes good things happen to good people. Like my sister’s Orthopedic surgeon works out of Pensacola, Florida, so our whole family, including me, made a beach vacation out of it.

                In late August, a week into the school year, my brother and I flew from TCU and rendezvoused at the Margaritaville Hotel on the Gulf Breeze strip. For three days, while my sister attended therapy, the other five of us reclined our beach chairs with a beer in hand and book in lap. You never really notice the sun’s migration in the sky until it effects your daily life. Every two hours my brother and I would adjust our chairs to squeeze into the shade. By 6pm, there’d be a distinct line moving from the right of the umbrella to underneath and finishing on the left side. The occasional four-leg indent could be found outside the pattern when one of us wanted to sunbathe. In the unrelenting high-90s heat, damp sweat marks would indent the sand as droplets overflowed from our bellybutton pool and slid down our stomachs.

                Sitting for hours had its benefits. Over the course of the day, every six hours to be exact, the tides became clear evident on this beach. At low tide, the waves crashed along the shore and the water drifted up against a sand ridge. With each hour, the water’s flux crept a few inches closer to the crest with the occasional towering wave sending a miniscule amount over. Finally, by high tide, the Moon pulled every single wave over the crest creating a shallow basin that pooled along with contents of the ocean water. Watching the Moon’s tug on Earth’s, one that biology teaches us generated necessary heat for life to evolved, appeased my nerdy, scientific psyche.

                As the sun began to descend, we knew it was dinner time and so did the pelicans. Out in the ocean, a flock glided parallel to coast only a few feet above the surface in shallow water. One by one, after selecting a target, each bird dove head-first, submerging its entire body and disappearing. None returned empty handed. They all shot back out with a delicious fish flopping within its beak until they raised their heads to sky and in one swift gulp, ate a nice snack. The ocean’s predator-prey selection was just fun amusement to another organism sharing the beach momentarily.