The bridge is three minutes from my door, and I have never once made it in three minutes.
It starts honestly enough. Shoes on, puppy clipped, tea abandoned half-warm on the bistro table because she saw the leash and negotiations collapsed. Out the gate, left at the oaks, and there it is — the little rise of road with the river under it, the first private thing you learn about living here: the beach is not a drive. It is a walk you could take in slippers, though I have opinions about people who do.
The delay is the middle of the bridge. You stop. Everyone stops. The water moves one way and the clouds move the other and a mullet jumps like it has been paid to. The puppy sits without being asked, which she does nowhere else on earth. Whatever I carried onto the bridge — the week, the list, the phone in my pocket — waits at the railing while I look.
Then sand, seven o'clock, the good hour. The dog walkers nod at the shell collectors, and the shell collectors nod at the one man doing tai chi who has been there longer than the dunes. By the time we come back over the bridge the tea is cold and I drink it anyway on the patio, because that is what Saturday is for.
Three minutes, if you don't stop. But you'll stop.
— M.