I woke up this morning with a sore throat and somebody’s wool blanket stuffed in my head. I am not amused. And worse, now that I’ve been up and out with the dog, I can’t get back to sleep. So I’m cruising Flickr, looking at other folks’ photos.
Michigan City Lighthouse, Michigan City, Indiana
Michigan City Lighthouse seen from a sand dune on Washington Park Beach, Michigan City, Indiana
Credit: Tom Gill, published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license
This was “our” beach, when my family lived in Michigan City. We lived on California Avenue, which was just a few blocks from Washington Park and the Washington Park beach. We could walk to the park via the beach, then cross the road and go to the Washington Park Zoo. The dune grass is sharp, and will cut you if you aren’t careful. We used to run around and play in the grass, and I remember getting long, razor cuts from it.
Sometimes we’d go to the lighthouse and walk the pier. There were usually old guys lined up on the pier, fishing. While the grown-ups were walking, us kids would scramble around. I remember climbing up on the center section, then down the far side. There was a narrow walkway there, and when the tide was out, it was easy to climb on the rocks. I was a chicken, though, so I only stepped on rocks that were right next to the walkway, and only those that were near the shore.
Frozen Shore by Meghan Linehan published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license
I remember going to the beach one winter and seeing, beyond the hurricane fencing, huge frozen waves. I was probably 6 or 7 years old, and I couldn’t figure out how water could freeze so quickly that it kept its wave form. Years later, I remembered those waves, and by then the solution was obvious. It really puzzled me at the time, though.
The photo doesn’t give a good idea of scale. These waves are enormous. And the ones I recall had wonderful, bizarre formations.
red paper boat 