St. Augustine Beach

February 8, St. Augustine Beach, happy hour at the Reef restaurant, looking over a berm of sand and sea grass at a gray/green and frothy Atlantic. Surf is 7' today.
The beaches all along the coast have changed dramatically, thanks to the hurricanes of recent years, from the wide and sandy beaches of my childhood. The ocean has taken half at least of every beach, creating offshore sand bars where the shoreline used to be. Great for surfers, not for homeowners.
I'm having a glass of Moet, watching trains of bubbles rising from the bottom of the flute. I look from it, out to the ocean, then back again, and the biggest set I've yet seen rises up and closes out in one decisive smack.
At home in the desert and ringed by mountains, I don't see this limitless horizon. I know intellectually that there is land out there, first the Bahamas and eventually the Iberian peninsula, but from here it looks like a world of water.
I'm tired in that lovely way that comes from hours of paddling in sun and wind and sparkling, wind-ruffled water. The rental kayak was slow, broad and stubby, and subject to wind resistance, but, as I paddle for the exercise as much as the experience, what does it matter? A mere 50 yards from the boat ramp a brown pelican had dropped like a missile so close I felt the spray. It scared the complacency out of me, startling me awake and aware, the first of dozens of pelicans, plus osprey, kingfisher, egrets, ibis, tri-colored herons and even some hooded mergansers. I got in some good work against the wind and surging tide, then explored some little bays and channels on the lee side of a barrier island. And now, showered and warmly dressed, my arms and shoulders aching, I'm enjoying some shrimp and an ocean view.
There are 3 surfers in full wetsuits working the shore break. From this elevation I can see better than they what is coming. Inside my head I chant, "This one! Take it! Paddle harder! Drop in; now cut left. No, left!" and it looks so easy from up here, warm, safe, with a glass of wine in my hand.
Clouds have moved in, a thin, mid-level blanket, a precursor to the wet weather coming tomorrow, the remnants of a pulse of energy that started on the west coast, the same one that grounded me at Palm Springs airport two days ago.
The waves are coming in at an angle to the beach, driving the surfers farther and farther south, and eventually, out of sight. A pelican cruises by from my right to my left, so close to the rising wave that it looks as if his wing must surely touch; so close that a perfect reflection of him glides by on the rising wall underneath.
The sun must have set somewhere behind me because the sky in the distant east, untouched as yet by the advancing front, has turned a pale rose atop a serene aqua. Rapidly, all color fades from sky and from sea, and the only relief from slatey blue is the white froth of the shoreline.