I went for a run along the beach today.

After sleeping most of the day Wednesday and sleeping a hearty 11 hours last night, I woke this morning finally rested and with the foreign and welcome feeling of having energy. I was surprised to want to run and realized that the other times I've been here I haven't been used to running regularly and perhaps that's why it seemed like something I'd have to force myself to do. But I'm in good shape now and with that fitness comes the body's strange habit of producing extra energy that tumesces until spent. That's how I woke, I guess, antsy with energy ready to put and not having given it outlet.

So I waited until the high tide slacked, because you must respect the tide, and set out on Chesterman Drive to Lynn and past the driveways backing those new and ostentatious mansions that are replacing the forest along the shoreline, and curved east toward the highway and then back along the highway to Chesterman again. From there I took the first access to the beach, sink-stepping through the always-dry sand to where the wide dun plain stretched into the sunlight and where, I swear, a hundred surfers stood on the flats or sat or rode on the blue-green waves cresting high. I ran through their huddles on the hard sand still heavy with receding sea, around the point and all the way to the bluff and turned around at the rocky headland, itself dominated by the arrogance of a massive resort. And then I ran all the way back, against a cool and lovely headwind, over the now-softening sand at the point, long freed from the tide, and back to the part of the beach where the little roped walkway to the cabin let down to it. People sat beside the walkway and I ignored them. Nailed to one of the tall coastline firs in front of the cabin was a sign that said For Sale by Owner, and then I knew why beachwalkers had been looking up at the cabin these past two days.

I have no idea how far that was. At least four miles, maybe as much as six.

I brought my bike all the way out here with tires flat from unuse and so I brought the pump too, and, today, still dripping with sweat from the run, I attached the ligature to the tube stem to right that indolence and pumped a few times before the valve exploded with a pop and escaping air and Kelly green bubbles that continued to ooze from the orifice long after the damage was done. I stared at the slime long ago entered by some bike shop mechanic, I can't remember who, and wondered why anyone would put a slimy substance where it could lash out at you. My fingers green and slick, I tried to ease the ligature from the valve stem by gently pulling and wiggling it, but the valve broke free, disengaging an inch of itself entirely and protruding from the tight grip of the pump mouth. I considered the decoupling and its irreparability. I looked at the wheel, bolted tight to the frame to discourage thieves, and I remembered that I'd brought no tools of any kind. As well as I know this cabin now, I know that it contains no tools not behind padlock. So, I went inside to look at the latest town newspaper for bicycle shop ads, but there were only two shops and neither nearby.

I guess if I go anywhere, I'll walk.

This evening before sundown I walked out on the low tide flats tentatively in the ominous feeling of impending rain and then bravely traveled the length of the beach to the islands that anchor the point that gives the beach its distinctive shape. The tide was at its nearest low and the day late. I stood alone on the farside rocks deep below the high tide line where the rocks never dry and the life exposed crackling and flaccid. I stayed a long time in the wind until some small drops of water not attributable to the smashing surf alighted on my cheeks and hands. Then I started back, taking advantage of the small nooks up under rarely exposed cliffs to walk in the humid shadow of the high tide line and around the dotted lines made by clams of who knows what kind. Others were just walking out when I returned, perhaps having just finished dinner and realizing a last stroll of the day. I passed them, not looking at them for wanting to be apart, and continued back the way I came beyond the rocky stair to the cabin out to the near southern bluff that makes the beach end. The surf way out and always up, a few tenacious surfers waited on a line that the ocean always seemed to miss. The air grayed. In that low nook before the rock some entity has built a monolith of condominiums and now there are always children spilling out of the trail there and a copse of adults surrounding a smoky fire. I feel like a visitor on that side of the beach, and so I never stay long but only visit the rough vista of the heaving, glistening rock that rests awful like a being beached that should be swimming in the sea.