Publish date to match the day I ran (8/30/2018), but posted on 10/7/2018
Wrightsville Beach is my ur-beach since we used to visit my grandparents here every summer. I got up early enough to park at the southern tip and run 3 miles up, past Johnny Mercer’s pier, and back down again, while the sun rose. I might have been motivated to get out to the beach that early anyway, but not to run so far.
At dawn the clouds look like solid dark objects; it’s only after the sun comes up that they resolve into their normal aspects.
The coolest thing I noticed is that the dawn light appears to evaporate off the sand as the waves retreat, because the reflection in the thinnest edge of moisture vanishes.
The sand was covered in hieroglyphic crab clawmarks centered on their holes. Lots of plovers, sandpipers, and gulls, but I was disappointed that in the swash—the edge of the waves—there were none of the “sand fiddlers” (mole crabs, Emerita talpoida) or “periwinkles” (coquina clams, Donax variabilis) I loved to observe as a kid.
I ran back around the southern tip of the beach to the sound side, walking back to the car through the sea oats.
