Ever since I was little I have loved the beach. It was never about playing in the sand or laying on a towel and tanning. No, it was about being in the water and the way it feels like a thousand little pins pricking your skin until you go numb from the cold. It was about the salty waves crashing against my chest and little droplets of seafoam sneaking into my mouth through the creases of my lips.
When I got older and got my drivers license, and now attend college at a beach-side school, the ocean became highly accessible for me. What I didn’t know was that other people had never gone to the beach in the rain. This blew my mind. Going to the beach in the rain has become one of my favorite activities. The water felt warmer, the sun was never too bright, my skin was never burnt, and the air was never too hot. Sure, there was water falling from the sky, but if you’re in the water anyways, does it really matter?
Laying on the shore, in a beach hoodie on a towel, with thousands of little drops of rain falling over your skin is therapy for me. I’ll go for an hour or two and swim, or sometimes just sit by the shore if the waves are too harsh, and just shut out the rest of the world; drowning it out with the sounds of the waves. There aren’t any passersby to judge me or to distract from the beauty of the world around me. Just me, the waves, and endless shores of sand.
I realize this may not seem like the ideal beach day to you, but if you haven’t done it before, you need to at least try it, because you might find going to the beach in the rain better than going in the sun.