6:30 AM Charlestown Beach

Originally Posted October 22, 2021

There's a quiet anticipation this morning at the campground. The Rhode Island coast is magnificent, and as the sun gently rises, a tropical breeze blows hard, erasing all sense of time.

It was a late night last night at a premier fishing location. The striped bass have been close in the surf, and in the rip nearby fishing boats struggle to maneuver in the current. All here are friends, or maybe just friendly, the friendship of returning year after year. A ventured hello. Never a name mentioned, lest it be forgotten.

It’s a tropical, coastal, beach world. A fellow I see constantly, surely not the same one, grizzled, in waders, rides an electric bike down the beach with a milk cart on the back, poles upright. Moving up and down the beach to the birds and the bait, he moves again quietly when the fishing boats drive the fish away.