Last week I went for a walk outside at midday. This in itself doesn’t sound extraordinary, but when you think about Italy in July, you’re best-off laying on the beach if you have to be outdoors at all when the sun is at its highest point. But I put on a hat and set out with no particular direction in mind. And as I walked, I had nothing in my ears. Just walking. Looking. Swatting random thoughts around in my head while routinely being brought back to the present state of the sights around me.  And it was about 10 minutes into this activity when I suddenly had a thought, “Wow, this feels great.”

I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about the state of adulthood and everything that it contains. Not just the day to day, but more specifically, the mind traps that seem far too easy to fall into. I suppose that this is the net result of my daily chores coupled with the amount of time I spend looking at my phone. It’s not a great combination, nor is it healthy. And it was only once I went for a walk in the heat (where the sun definitely overpowered the luminosity of my smartphone), that I identified a critical deficiency in my daily consumption. 

And so this morning I had planned to do some strength exercises. I like to alternate between cardio and strength days—but neither in any crazy or exaggerated approach. I do just enough to still feel strong and capable of moving spontaneously should the need arise. But today was a Saturday morning, and I was still thinking about that previous sweltering walk. After a seemingly long week jammed with lots of mental calisthenics, I was dying to recapture that feeling. The need to simply look, watch, think, and listen.

After little deliberation, I decided to go down to the sea. One thing I love about living in Rome (and there are many things, to be sure), is that you are not far from anything. Whether it be the mountains or the Mediterranean Sea, both can be had with a little bit of access to transportation. 

It was early enough that the parking lots bordering the Tyrrhenian Sea were still largely empty. Virtually the only folks coming at the hour are older guys keen on some early morning fishing. As I left the pavement and headed for the dusky sand that is typical of this area, I remembered the odd camber of the shoreline.  In many places, it is a sharp angle—perhaps more ideally suited for the fisherman with their long poles driven into the ground as they stood and watched the water with patience. 

 I decided to head north, my legs awkwardly bobbing up and down the slant until I finally reached a more horizontal surface area. With a less arduous path ahead, I was able to spend more time looking around. To my right, there was only the slow rolling of patient ice blue waves.  Of course it was peaceful in a way that begged a snapshot. Worthy of capture also because I knew that these moments of the day are so short-lived. To my right, as far as I could see I swaths of beaches devoid of people but also completely overpopulated by rows of closed-up beach umbrellas sticking into the sand.   

Just weeks before, I had taken my family here for a swim—at the moment, all of these umbrellas had been claimed. And so had the little remaining area around it. We had arrived late, and as such had virtually no free space at all to open our blankets and have a seat. My nephew and I had a similar thought: almost all of the people who had come to the beach had unfolded themselves onto the sand, while there were far fewer people in the water. We made a plan to go in and then we stayed there until it was time to go back home again. The rest of my family found rocks to perch themselves on, and they watched us from afar as we moved through the water. 

Back to my morning walk, I contrasted that afternoon swim with this one now: same place, different way of seeing this. Instead of finding some space of our own in the water, I now had so much unobstructed space around me.  Between the hundreds of beach umbrellas and the sea in gentle flux next to me, I recorded vestiges of the previous day.  Foot and paw prints easily traced in direct lines, while many haphazard seagull prints went every which way because those birds are total chaos. Once again, I felt so much better just by feeling present.

I took another couple of photographs before leaving the beach for the morning. Holding my phone up in front of me, I panned around, deciding how it might be best to frame a photo. Viewfinders aiding both artwork and SLR photography are not so common anymore—but I still employ those methods when capturing something.  If I moved to the right, I had far too many blue and white umbrella sticks clogging the horizon. Moving to the right, it was of course far more open as you only captured the sea.

I thought a bit more about the viewfinder. Specifically, I am thinking about an old cardboard one that I inherited from my great-grandmother’s art kit. As a painter, she used it constantly to capture scenes of northern Maine—from our remote camp to a lady’s slipper orchid that hangs at home on Cape Cod. The viewfinder is all about perspective, and as I looked at all of those umbrella villages covering each stretch of beach, I understood that I was a part of all of that. “All that” meaning the creature comforts that we humans have constructed….no matter how technological or simplistic in construction. 

But of course I am also a part of everywhere else: the sea, the outdoors—the more readily-obtainable things that I can take for granted and thus forget about. This happens because I often have many things competing for my attention, and at the end of the day, I tend to just default to my phone. Not always an endorphin-producing endeavor. But once I finally get outside of everything and just let my mind flatten out—I recall that I need to be more mindful of training my view more towards the sea. Or at least somewhere more. expansive.

After I finished my walk, I got back home and reflexively pulled off my running shoes. As I did so, a pile of sand came out with my foot and made a mess of the kitchen floor. I laughed—but also likely chided myself for not anticipating that I would be bringing back some of the beach with me. It’s really not so much a nuisance, but perhaps a reminder that both places should be encouraged to coexist. I’ll get around to cleaning the floor, but as the weeks continue on and maturity continues to exact its demands, I’ll be sure to get back outside again as much as possible. It’s amazing how nature never stops continuing to silently teach you.