I slept last night in the calming lull of ocean waves, my first night sleeping on a beach. I woke once to see Orion overhead in the unknown hours of the night. I woke later to a rising orange slice of the moon in the pre-dawn darkness, and finally to a reddening sky streaked with clouds.

It is a frosty morning. The tent was wet on the inside from my breath, and everything outside was covered in frost: shoes, bags, tent, bike, all crystalline beauty.

I have spent this morning very slowly. The first rays of light give their own take on scenery, giving beautiful but false colors to everyday objects; orange water, red grass, golden birds, silhouettes of fences and riding gloves. The later dawn sunlight brings out the real beauty that is in these objects, the textures they possess: green grass with unnoticed ridges hinted at by lines of darkness along the blades; the never flat contour of the ocean water, the wind-rippled sand of the beach.

Ships passing on the horizon remind me that this is also a beginning, that I too have a mission and must be traveling. Much as I feel it, this is not my beach, just mine for the morning. It is time to be moving again.