HI, MY NAME IS TINA.

The campsite of Tina.

I met Tina and her three dogs on the beach this evening on my shore walk.  She was at a campsite on the beach.  I don't like campsites on the beach.  I have visions of a homeless camp down there and that just will not do.  I draw the line at trailer dwelling.

As I was walking back she approached me.  My first thought was, "surely she doesn't think I carried money down here," but I stopped letting her get close enough to hear her question.  She wanted to know if she could build a fire on the beach.  I answered yes, folks do that all the time.  I even gave her the "palm dump" spot where she could probably find enough palm chunks to get it started.

She then wanted to know if she was safe from the water where she was on the beach.  The wind was 40 miles an hour yesterday but today it was normal so I said I think so.  She didn't ask me about rapists, murderers,wild dogs, giant sea turtles, or alligators so I kept my thoughts to myself.  Tina went on to explain she just left something terrible in new Orleans and was taking her bucket list trip.

The wind on Monday made these amazing patterns in the sand.  I thought the shadow looked like a skyline.

Tina must have felt I needed an explanation because she told me she bought a used RV but then the transmission went bad so now she was tenting it for the next 90 days.  Whatever she left in New Orleans must have been bad enough to send her camping on a Texas beach in winter with three dogs.

The logical side of me wanted to bring her here to Lee's Landing.  The scared side of me thought maybe
the terrible thing she left behind might be her husbands headless body in the freezer and the head was in the cooler beside her car.  The adventurer in me thought she was pretty darn brave...a lot braver that I will ever be. (This translates to one of my kids is gonna let me sleep on their couch if I ever get to that point)

In the end, she wished me goodbye and turned back to her campsite.  I walked away hoping she was "packing" just in case.  I worried that evening that Tina might be cold, she was now under water or worse.
I grabbed a cup of coffee and two kolaches at first light and went to make sure she was OK.  If she was Jesus and this was a test, I wanted to pass it.  (No humor intended)

There she sat in her tent, safe and sound.  I reminded her that we met yesterday as I handed over the coffee and kolaches.  Tina made it through the night, heat generated by  the dogs and two candles.  There beside her bed sat one of the tapers in a brass candlestick...a woman after my own heart.

We chatted for just a moment, she remarked "she loved the peace and quiet."  So I left her to it.  As I walked back to the car I saw a single castle in the sand, standing stalwart against the wind and water which besieged it a day earlier.  I guess we all must be alone at one time or another.  Like Tina, we need to appreciate the "peace and quiet" in those moments.

When I was younger things like this would make me sad.  Poor little sand castle standing there all alone.