I grew up near a beach with lovely brown water fringed with fluffy beige foam from the industrial factories nearby. Hidden within the water were black chunks of tar that had be removed with publicly available tar soap. It wasn't a spectacular beach, to say the least, but one of the advantages of growing up near Galveston Island, TX, is that I can enjoy nearly any beach without much criticism or unmet expectation. As a child, all I noticed about the beach was the fun in the sand and the time with my family all together, relaxing. We were there with no agenda, no hurry, no schedule. My mom, from whom I have inherited a "touch" of OCD, would dig in the sand for hours to help me create the perfect sand castle or hole. She even tried to help me protect it from my brother Jonathan, who was, and is, a force of entropy, especially when it relates to artistically built sand. My dad, who just can't swim at all, braved strong rip currents and huge mocha swells to pull our rafts through enormous waves, specifically in order to hear my brother and I shrieking with joy. Well, I guess I was shrieking. Jonathan was usually begging him to takes us deeper to more dangerous adventures. All my family memories sanctify and cleanse Galveston beach to my memory, but as I look back at it through my objective adult eyes, the beach itself was not the creator of family magic. The ocean was only the backdrop, but it is the backdrop with which I am most familiar.
Since I love the beach so much, and since Greg loves me so much, it was fairly natural for the Mizell family to choose a beach for our first family camping trip, which also coincided with my brotherJonathan's first visit to Australia. We were so excited about having a great place to bring Uncle Jona when he came to visit, and we even scoped out the ocean-side beach at Bribie Island two weekends before he arrived, to make sure it was sufficiently spectacular.
In order to drive out to our remote campsite, we had to wait until low tide, which happened to be around 1 pm on Thursday when we left. Greg made the mistake of giving me a chart that tells the tides for the rest of the year. I may have to hide it from myself to make sure that I don't nourish the obsessive compulsive that lurks within me (thanks mom!). Driving at any time that was farther away from low tide than 2 hours on either side would mean driving through thick dry sand, where the potential for getting stuck increases exponentially. Driving at low tide, we drove on the sand that had been packed by the tide. The sand was white and fine and beautiful, and as smooth as an interstate (in Texas--not Louisiana). The scenic drive down eighteen kilometers of beach took us past 4 salt water lagoons and along-side perfect, untouched mangrove and eucalyptus forests that swayed in time with the coastal breezes. We had the whole car loaded down with entirely too much gear and food, and the load on the roof made the car nearly 10 feet tall.
Our planning and packing had taken a little too long, and so we were going to make the drive within the last 30 minutes of the end of the low tide window, which made me a little nervous. Fortunately, we made all the way up the coast without any sort of incident, even with the turquoise tide rising. On the way up from the tide-packed sand to driveway 16 and campsite 50, where we would reside for 3 days, we had to drive across the soft sand. It is likely that the extra weight from "dark Jona" (my pet name for my beloved brother), helped get us stuck in the sand, although it could possibly have been the extra 500 lbs of gear and food. At any rate, the most eventful part of the trip occurred at the beginning when the car got stuck. Thankfully, Greg and Jonathan were brilliant and strong, and they dislodged our huge white "Landie" with no trouble at all.
We set up our campsite, and commmenced with relaxation. During the three days we spent at Bribie Island, we were completely isolated from civilization. We accidently lost our phones. We heard no news. We were there to enjoy nature and eachother. We were there to create our own foundation of family memories for my girls, and to share our family life and love with Jonathan, who has yet to settle down into the stability and happiness and loud craziness where we live daily.
Greg and Jonathan fished and spear-fished, and between the two of them, 4 fish lost their scaly lives. The girls also caught some clams for uncle jona to sample. All the seafood would have tasted great on the grill if we had been able to remove a just little more sand. I guess we have inadvertantly discovered the reason for buying your fresh fish and clams at a market or store. Good fish fillets would have been a nice side product of the time invested in fishing, but really, the main point of fishing, for my husband and my brother, was to spend time together and to build new memories, inside jokes, and reasons to razz eachother.
Jordan, Meryl, and Micah Jade are learning to look for new adventures every day, and running wild at Bribie was easy experience in adventure-seeking for them and great food for their imaginations. Jordan and Meryl loved living in their tent. Their sleeping bags were gritty and occasionally invaded by ants hoping for a bite of the leftovers on their clothes. Amazingly, when you are a small, imaginitave child, it takes more than ants and sand to disrupt your own little world created within your magical purple tent. They awoke at dawn both mornings, ready for whatever the sand and sea would bring. They explored the bathroom, and found out that Meryl was not heavy enough to flush the toilet with its funny footpad flusher. (Jordan was just barely heavy enough if she jumped.) Jordan discovered a wallaby with its joey at the bathroom, and all three girls crept close enough to see the baby embracing its mother, during a playful boxing session. Digging holes and sandy pools, that would later terrorize the suspension systems of four-wheel-driving vehicles at low tide, occupied a great deal of Jordan and Meryl's time on the beach. Micah Jade floated between the big girls and "mum," afraid that somehow, I might escape Bribie without her. My three little girls were caked with sunscreen and white-sand from head to toe by the time we left. Their skin turned golden, their matted hair went sun-streaked, and generally, they began to look like shipwrecked children in a movie--wild and brown. I hope Jordan and Meryl and Micah Jade never lose their appetite for adventure. I hope Greg and I can teach consequence without teaching fear. Most of all, I hope they are always a little wild and magical, like they are right now.
Most of my weekend enjoyment was spent playing with the girls, laughing with Greg and Jonathan, and talking about our lives. I loved watching the people I love most enjoying nature and each other, but at the end of the second day, I had a chance to walk down the beach alone. I love walking on the beach alone, which is a little funny, since generally, I am not a huge fan of solitude. Beach-walking is a different thing, altogether, for some reason, and I have loved that brand of solitude since I was a small child. There was hardly anyone around on the end where I walked, so I sang as loud as I wanted to, and walked in the waves and natural sand pools as the tide came in. I gathered shells and clams and snails for the kids, and I imagined what would be up ahead on the beach and in my life. I have always been a little bit dreamy, but the rhythm of the ocean never fails to bring my imagination out with power.
All the walking, two hours worth, made me ponder the way that the Australian landscape is affecting me. I love Texas and the beauty of America, but Australia is just so different to me. I feel close to creation and to its Creator in a way that I have never before experienced. It is kind of like if you had a favorite artist who painted really beautiful still lifes. Imagine you had memorized every painting and thought that you could never like anything more. The Australian landscape in general, and Bribie Island in particular is like finding whole new collections of paintings by your favorite artist, now painting new subject matter in a new ways. I find the beauty of each new place that I go powerful that it literally brings me to tears.
In every way, our camping trip was a success. We played and laughed and pretended and dug and dreamed all weekend. We are building the foundation of family memories for our marriage and for our family so that our girls can look back as I can, to beautiful times in happy places. I say, bring on the adventures. Bring on new places and new people and new experience. May the Creator who has made so many majestic places, weave the new things in our lives into new kinds of beauty in our marriage and family. To the untrained eye, our weekend may have been mostly sand and ants, but to us, camping at Bribie Island will always be a magical memory.
