starting with my toes and ending with everything

There are a few delicious days every summer, when I can float on a warm rising tide, watching the snow-capped mountains in the distance across the waves, with my toes bobbing in the foreground. Those days when I can smell the special sweet tidal smell that sailors know as the smell of land and all the rest of us know as the smell of the sea, and when I can let my whole body melt into the bliss of sea and sun and clean exquisite wild beauty.

There aren't a lot of these days each summer; the conditions have to be just right. Weather, tides, time, temperature, ocean currents and seaweed bloom, all must line up to create the perfection of late afternoon warm high tide, sunshine, calm seas, and clear water.

This year, there have only been a handful of these days, and today is one of them. I've just come in from surrendering to the warm ocean... now I feel clean and light, the sun is setting all I can hear is a few crickets and the dog gently snoring...

So, my solo bittersweet end of August swim got me thinking.
As I sat on the beach
and contemplated my sandy toes and breathed in the sea air,
because we've been thinking about making a change, a move, I thought,
Could I really leave this place? All this beauty?
And then I thought
I will leave this place,
I must,
we all must, someday sooner or later.
Someday sooner or later
I'll leave it all, starting with my silly big toes (sand covered and needing a fresh coat of polish)
I'll leave my toes
I'll leave the gorgeous oceans and the people I love
and my dog, and the sunshine
 and the rain and my soft-skinned body and finally everything.

So what is important now?
Joy, breathing in, giving back, loving everything up to the enth degree. Celebrating. And learning, little by little, to let go,
just for the practice.