Golden Golden Beach

 Golden Beach at sunrise on mornings like this reminds me of just why we're here. It doesn't get much better than this.  A tranquil sea, dawn pinks and blues, miniature waves  lapping and tickling, pelicans swooping and rocking on the water, turnstones and sanderlings scurrying on their clockwork legs. 

An osprey flies overhead with his breakfast takeaway and a sudden "plop" behind me as a tern dives, then another and another, while a tiny plane from the wakening airport putters out over the ocean.  While below just the odd hopeful shark tooth prospector, a fisherman lining up his rods, a white sail on the horizon.

 And clambering back over a still empty wooden walkway, past Sharky's beach pavilion, the smell of disinfectant and early morning masked cleaners scrubbing dutifully, skirting one of the last remaining bits of wilderness by the Coastguard post, a red-shouldered hawk on  a dead tree watching from high above. 

Then in  a few strides back again to manicured front gardens and squirrels skittering back and forth across the road, tiny acorns from the live oaks crunching under my shoes. It's not yet the hour of the leaf blower but of cyclists bowling past with a "Good Morning!" and the grass on the short cut to our house still soaked in dew. You can almost think that everything's right with the world. Maybe it is.