There are mornings when the water and the sky agree to share the same color, and you find yourself holding your breath a little, just to keep from disturbing the quiet.
I spotted her in that hush — a lone fisherwoman standing ankle-deep in the Gulf, rod in hand, her silhouette traced by the light dancing across the water. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t waiting, exactly. She was just there, the way a heron is there, the way a piece of driftwood belongs to the shore.
The sun had scattered itself into a thousand little stars across the surface, and she stood right in the middle of all that shimmer like she’d been invited. Two boats drifted somewhere on the horizon, small as commas, and the rocks at her feet leaned in like old friends keeping her company.
I think what struck me most was her stillness — that easy, unhurried kind of stillness you only find in people who know the water. She wasn’t trying to catch anything. She was already holding it: the morning, the silver light, the soft slap of small waves, the salt in the air.
Some mornings the Gulf gives you fish. Some mornings it gives you a moment like this one — a reminder that peace isn’t something you chase. It’s something you wade out into, quietly, and let settle around your knees.
I’m so glad I had my camera.
✦ caught the salt air?