{"id":3519,"date":"2025-04-25T07:48:44","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T14:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=3519"},"modified":"2025-04-25T11:16:47","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T18:16:47","slug":"walk-on-a-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/?p=3519","title":{"rendered":"Walk on a Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"

“If there’s heaven for me, I’m sure it has a beach attached to it” wrote singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Beach goers like Buffet are profusive in their praise. <\/strong>\u201cThere\u2019s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it\u2019s sent away,\u201d wrote poet Sarah Kay. A less modern day poet, T.S. Elliot put it this way: \u201cAt the beach\u2014time you enjoyed wasting, is not wasted.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was surprised by the sheer number of beach walkers. I guess I shouldn\u2019t be. The U.S. has nearly 100,000 miles of shoreline (along the Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf of Mexico and Great Lakes). And beaches are the top tourist destination in the U.S. Over 180 million Americans make a total of about 2 billion trips, more than double the visits to all the national and state parks combined.<\/p>\n

Why do people love the beach so? \u00a0\u201cI could never stay long enough on the shore; the tang of the untainted, fresh, and free sea air was like a cool, quieting thought,\u201d wrote Helen Keller. Besides the alluring smell, walkers talk about the feel of the sand on bare feet and almost all mention the sound of the surf breaking on the land, especially if the land has rocks to add contrast to its notes played on the tierra firma.<\/p>\n

Add to this the sea vanishing into blue sky on the horizon, and one has a sense of the immenseness of beauty itself. As one unknown beach walker wrote, \u201cnothing soothes the soul like a walk on the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

**Book update: I\u2019m about to release the book. Have received proof copies and hopefully fixed all the errors. You\u2019re going to love the pictures. Did I tell you each page has a really cool nature photo to go along with my short essay (blog)? Because I was able to find such amazing photos (I didn\u2019t take them), I\u2019m publishing this as a hardback (along with the paperback and e-book). With its large size (7 x 10), it should make a nice coffee table book.<\/p>\n

When the time draws near I\u2019m going to \u201calmost giveaway\u201d the e-book to get things started (in order to count in my stats, Amazon won\u2019t let me sell them for nothing). I\u2019ll let you know when it goes live.<\/p>\n

Thanks again for reading my stuff. Nothing brings a writer more joy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“If there’s heaven for me, I’m sure it has a beach attached to it” wrote singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett. Beach goers like Buffet are profusive in their praise. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it\u2019s sent away,\u201d wrote poet Sarah Kay. A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3519"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3524,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519\/revisions\/3524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikebellah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}