Behind the Thick Shrubbery

AN unplanned drive to Lower Base last Friday afternoon led me and a friend into a place I hadn’t explored before.

Armed with cameras, we left our car on the roadside and we made our way toward the jogging track, looking for some way to get near the shore. We finally found a small clearing where we were able to crawl beneath tangles of hanging vines and clamber over protruding roots and trunks to discover a small paradise.
Cloaked behind rows of thick foliage was a clearing that gave one a new perspective of how  Smiling Cove Marina looked like. Picking our way so as not to step on soft sand, we started shooting photos of anything and everything that caught our attention.
It was a real challenge to  watch your steps and your head at the same time so you wouldn’t get entangled in a spider’s web or hit your head on the trees and branches while slapping mosquitoes and other insects that seemed angry at our intrusion.
This was one spot where life seemed to stand still. It felt almost a sin to talk and break the silence. The tide was out and hundreds of crabs big and small were scrambling out of their holes in the sand. The surface of the water looked so smooth under the hot rays of the afternoon sun, broken only by the occasional flash of flying fish.

My companion Donna, who was wearing high heels, ventured farther out to a small “island” of sand but I stayed safely on the shore, standing on a half-submerged tire. I had no wish to get my flat sandals wet.

We stayed for a long moment and crawled  to another portion where a small boat was pushed under some trees — a perfect place where the owner could easily pull it out to the water the next time he wanted to use it.

Under more trees, we saw a broken boat — or the rusty remnants of a boat. Oh the stories that boat could tell! To the regular individual, the rusty ruins were an eye sore, but not for one with a camera. It added to the beauty of the place.
Very soon, we had to move on and look for another nook to discover. Back at the jogging trail everything was normal — men and women, most of them wearing headphones, and lost in their own world, as they jog. They didn’t know that if they would stop for a while and cross those few steps beyond the cemented trail, a whole new world awaited them.
First published HERE