Perched on the splinter-packed wood, I stared past the mountainous hill at the water. I rocked back and forth with my ginger ale in hand while the smell of burning rubber and gasoline mixed with the tang of the salt water. My dad would always tell me that salt water makes you sleep better, and I always felt like that was true. Something about salt water just “knocked me out”. As cars rolled down the road, which wrapped around the hill, I stayed fixated on the sunset unfolding in front of me. There was an array of purple and orange mixed with sky blue. Very reminiscent of the painting hanging in my living room of the beautiful North Haven thorofare with the setting-sun reflecting off the calm water. I watched the sunset boats enter and exit the Casino at the 5 mph restriction. This view couldn’t be wasted, so I scurried inside and grabbed my dad’s attention. We lived in a two sided house which consisted of my grandparents on the half facing the water and our half which faced the street. After grabbing his attention we decided to trot down to our boat and check the view out from there. This moment of observing the beauty of the nature around us was so simple yet, so memorable.
That next day we rose early in the morning to catch the sun-rise from the golf course. We grabbed a cart and skipped the first 6 holes, so we could head to the 7th hole. The 7th hole had luxuriant brush to the right of the tee and a cliff leading to the water on the left. It was not typically a hole that people wanted to spend lots of time at, but our situation was different. With high tide present waves boomed off the bottom of the cliff. We had a perfect view of the water and horizon.
I was still groggy from the lack of sleep and my eyes were still crusted over. We posted up inside the deteriorating golf cart as the sun pierced the horizon, a ball of fire slowly rising, turning the sky a tangy orange.
These moments of taking a step back from reality and observing the beauty around us didn’t seem important at first but they are important to my appreciation of nature today. Being able to spend time almost every summer in North Haven has allowed me to have a greater appreciation of the outdoors. Whether its playing soccer on saturday afternoons on the desolate field or taking picnics to nearby islands, theres also something adventurous to do.