A midsummer escape to the shore, for anyone who needs the ocean today and can't get there.

Stand on a white sand beach just before dawn and wiggle your toes into the cool sand. Grow roots from the arches of your feet into the earth. Watch the horizon turn from cool blue to fiery orange, taste a mango or a ripe strawberry, and feel the joy of leaping dolphins well up inside you. Wade into the warm water only as far as feels safe, then float past the coral reef, a gliding manatee and a clownfish in its anemone, and let your worries drift away like seaweed. Bathe in a golden sun that comes close enough to pour its light into your heart.

Jeremy ran an ocean soundtrack under the bowls that I couldn't hear from where I sat. Afterward, it felt like we'd been sitting inside a seashell.