I heart you ocean, rogue waves and all

I have fresh ink, you know, new tattoos, which means I’m not supposed to get them wet to prevent infection. But it had been so long since a Team Wy trip to the Atlantic, I just demanded. “I want to go to the ocean,” I told Matthew.

“But you can’t get your tattoos wet.”

“Just a little ocean, please?”

And he knew what I meant, that I just wanted to wade a bit and kick around in the surf, so he agreed. With one codicil: he had work to do, and wasn’t free to go until three pm. Boo. I like to go earlier in the day so that we risk less sunburn. But, three or nothing, and I accepted three.

We arrived to discover that three pm is high tide. Who knew? I’m used to Lake Michigan where the water is psycho cold but the little wave-lets and nonexistent tides are predictable. High tide meant that instead of the gentle, sloping, sandy beach we were used to in St. Augustine, we were confined to a small strip of broken shell detritus for a shore. The shell grit hurt to walk on, but we got used to it pretty quickly.

We’ve also had four days of non-stop rain that dumped nine inches of water on St. Augustine. Let’s do ocean math: high tide plus four storm days equals rough surf. So much for the easy-breezy ocean romp! We waded up to our feet and got splashed up to our thighs with huge choppy waves. Even at so shallow a wading distance, I actually got knocked down by powerful blasts twice, dragged across the gritty shell-covered shore. Both times, I made Matthew reach down to grip my arm and drag me up to standing before I was swept out to sea. Matthew said, “We won’t go any deeper; this is the kind of surf that people go into and get lost.”

As we stood in the surf, a middle-aged woman wearing a religious t-shirt and carrying a Miller High Life tall boy stumbled our way. I don’t know why she was following her particular trajectory, except that she was drunk and seemed to be following the edge of the wave line, but she made her bumbling way straight toward us. Without my glasses, I didn’t realize how ominous she really looked until she was about five feet from us, and still she kept weaving directly our way, not veering off to give us space. Just as she reached a two foot distance, a large wave blasted in and knocked her unsteady feet. As she fell, she nearly reached out to grab us to stop her stumble. Not wanting to be pulled down by drunk, rambling strangers, we were pretty freaked out by the incident, and gladly watched her regain her balance and stumble along further down the beach. We wondered mostly where she got that t-shirt and if god protected drunk women on the beach.

A young woman watching two small children—we assumed her to be a nanny—played high up from the water, the older child dashing into the bubbly reach of the waves, and putting sand in buckets to dump it out back on the shore. Another large wave crashed in, and I saw the older child’s orange bucket get swept away as the nanny ran to grab him. I said to Matthew, “Oh, that poor kid just lost his bucket.” We both strained to see if we could find it in the waves. I kept telling Matthew, “It’s gone, the waves took it,” and he replied, “The sea giveth, and the sea taketh away.” So biblically appropriate.

Amazingly, after giving up, we saw the orange bucket bob up to the surface and get stuck in a trough where the incoming and outgoing waves met. Matthew declared, “I’m going to get that bucket.” I asked him not to, told him it only cost 99 cents, but he insisted on saving the child’s day. I watched in horror as he waded out into the strong waves, making little forward progress toward the floating bucket. I knew this was the chance for the ocean to knock him down and sweep him away. As he ducked under for each wave, I waited desperately for him to pop back up. Somehow he managed to defeat the Atlantic each time, but he struggled to get to the bucket, merely a few feet away from it, but impossible to reach it in the wave convergence. I kept thinking of what he said: “This is the kind of surf that people go into and get lost.”

Finally he caught the orange pail, and then he began the epic struggle back to shore. I watched, again my stomach in knots, as he fought the waves to make it back to the beach. I thought both concerned and selfish things. “What if he goes down. There’s no lifeguard, no one to save him?” And: “What if I get knocked over by a wave again? Who will pull me back up?” But he magically made it back to the nanny and the two children. I was so worried when he finally got back to me, that I forgot to ask if they thanked him. They didn’t look very thankful, but I was too far away to know for sure.

And thus our strangest ocean adventure yet. When we came out to dry off, we were both covered in tiny fragments of shell. I showered at home, and had to use a loofah to scrub all the little sharp pieces out of my skin they were embedded so stubbornly. Clean and tired, I collapsed on the couch, grateful to have my little ocean, though it turned out to be so big.