I Would Live That Moment Again - Anne Wright

We drove along the beach road in Baja, looking for a place to stop and swim. Our car was one of those old VW beetles, the original kind with uncomfortable seats and the air conditioner knobs that made you think someday some cool air would come out of the vents below your sweaty legs.

When we stopped, we saw a beach with turkey vultures walking around in the sand and I wondered what they were looking for, bodies of dead horses or pigs that may have washed up in the tide, or even bodies of people. But this was our beach and we dragged the basket with chips and Coca cola and rum and towels and suntan lotion down the little cliff.

I was very careful where I stepped. It was the kind of place where anything could happen, and maybe something very gross was under the sand. We laid out our towels at one end of the beach, and the turkey vultures stayed at the other, walking around, sometimes flying off to another beach, looking for who knows what.

I don’t know why I thought I’d like to lie in the sun. It was too hot. We had no umbrella. I wanted to go into the water. It was a little cove and the waves were just too hot and tired to crash on the shore, so they lapped in then languished back out. The water was not what I expected. It was bathtub warm, and I saw lots of seaweed floating, the kind that might hide poisonous jellyfish and stinging small spikey fish and we were out in the middle of nowhere.

The salty sand made my feet itch and I gave up on the idea of swimming out in the deep water so I went back to my towel. Man, it was hot. I had to have shade, so Rollie fixed a little tent for me, draping the towel over the bleached limbs of a shipwrecked tree, and I sat on my coverup and drank a warm rum and coke.

I would live that moment again.