Bethany Beach, Delaware, July 20, 2017

★★★ The early light through the window raised brilliant cobalt-blue highlights on the bathroom faucet. Surf boomed; gulls left footprints on the new-raked sand. A thin crescent moon bowed toward a patch of gleaming pink where the sun was scheduled to be arriving. The horizon was a bright silver line. The appointed moment came with no visible change in the distant haze, but the mother-of-pearl shine on the water grew more and more lurid. Finally a little irregular fleck of bright red appeared and swiftly grew into a rising red circle, schematic as a tamari label. The gulls paid it no attention, while the lone body-boarder out in the water paused to watch it. The red went over to metallic orange, the color of something not quite remembered from childhood. The line of it undulated side to side across the water and now up onto the wetted sand. Orange fingers of foam reached once or twice all the way to the top of the steepest slope. Tiny figures of paddleboarders moved out to sea in sudden multiplicity, standing upright, like a line of pilgrims in a vast wilderness. A man swept a metal detector back and forth on the line leading out from the umbrella-rental stand. By the time the beach was full and lifeguarded, the regular day was savagely hot. If the trek to the water could be borne, the waves themselves were cool, and after a while a breeze came up to spread the chill from their breaking. It was enough to raise goosebumps. Four pelicans flew by in formation. The afternoon was full of glare, and the late air coming through the trolley was neither uncomfortable nor refreshing.