This setting of "For the Beauty of the Earth” is my homage to the ocean. Just like life, the ocean is uncontrollable and comes with good and bad. Its gentle current soothes and its crashing waves destroy and yet it remains faithful to its beauty.

I had the privilege of living 100 steps away from the Atlantic Ocean in July of 2020.

The paragraphs below describe what we saw. The music attempts to portray the images when words fail.

Most days, gentle waves draw a white line of foam on the beige colored sand sprinkled with shells. The brilliance of the blue sky and the white cotton candy clouds complement the water’s indelible combination of teal and blue.

Curious what the ocean was like in the morning, one day we took our coffee and walked down to the beach and found that angry waves carved steep scarps (banks) in the sand. We were horrified to find numerous sea turtle nests exposed to the elements as the water eroded the sand that had once created a snug incubator for the eggs.

Another day, we awoke to a massive blob of seagrass that stretched for miles along the coast and out to the horizon. Every wave pushed more clumps of the weed onto the beach. The coast was lined with heaping mounds of dried brown seagrass that when baked by the sun, became crunchy and attracted flies and other critters

Some days, wind surfers would take to the sea and we watched them maneuver the waves and catch the wind in their colorful sails.

On our evening walks, the horizon showcased clouds exploding into enormous plumes that dazzled us with light shows while the moonbeams sparkled in the water. On two particular evenings, we stumbled across sea turtle hatchlings instinctively sneaking their way to their new ocean home.

Since “our beach” welcomes dogs, we usually found ourselves chuckling about a dog hopping over the waves and fetching a tennis ball thrown far into the ocean. Of course, people and bird watching kept us plenty busy. We braved the waves broken at the shore and floated on our backs letting the current of warm salt water lift our toes above the surface as if we were weightless. 

Please enjoy the video to see many more of my favorite photos of the south Florida coast.