North Beach in Winter

      North Beach is a five-minute walk from my parents’ condo on the New Hampshire seacoast. In winter, Jersey barriers block the access path from Ocean Boulevard to prevent storm erosion. But even before I can see the beach behind the barriers, I can smell the seaweed. This is a good sign. The tide will be out. The beach is impassible at high tide, the high-water mark intersecting with the line of seawall about two-thirds of the way down the 1.5-mile strand to where it ends at Great Boar’s Head. After a mild storm, the waves at high tide will slap against the wall on the southern stretch, sending geysers into the air and soaking anyone standing on the sidewalk. Nor’easters can hurl gallons of water along with pebbles and sand over the wall and into the road. Now, at low tide, the beach is wide and flat. Perfect for walking.

Here at the north end, where the beach curves into a small cove, low tide exposes craggy dark rocks crusted over with barnacles and slathered in seaweed. In summer, kids swarm over them scouting for starfish, snails, crabs and other treasures marooned in pools between the rocks. This gray afternoon, one unleashed chocolate Labrador sniffs along the edges of the rocks then bounds after someone in a dark parka heading down the beach. Farther on are a scattering of other people, dogs running between them.

I grew up an hour inland, but my family came out often to the coast. On summer weekends, my father would drive us out to the state park that sits alongside the channel dividing Hampton from Seabrook to the south. Our station wagon would be backed up alongside our cousins’, tailgates dropped, charcoal grills set up, lawn chairs and chaises circled round, and giant coolers hefted out onto the gravel. All the cousins would scramble around on the huge rock slabs lining the channel or, if the tide was out, explore the rippled hard sand down below. By mid-day, the smell of charcoal and grilling pork chops and hot dogs filled the air, mixed with the coconut of our sunscreen. The sounds of our parents talking and laughing played against the baseline of surf and the wavering rhythms of a ballgame on someone’s portable radio, pierced by occasional cries of seagulls hoping for scraps.

When I was a teenager, my family rented a funky little cottage up at North Beach, near where my parents have now retired. We’d stay for a week or two in August and my brother and I were allowed to bring friends. During the day, at whatever time the tide was out, we crossed Ocean Boulevard to go sunbake ourselves on the beach and swim in the biting cold surf. I remember taking our blue jeans down to soak in seawater, then hanging them out to bleach in the sun. This was before manufacturers did the work for you at twice the price. After supper, we’d walk the two miles down to the Center where the Hampton Beach Casino, which first opened in 1899, housed t-shirt shops, penny arcades, and stalls selling fried dough, saltwater taffy, and pizza by the slice. In the 25-30 years since then, the area sprouted tattoo parlors, trashier shops and flea-bag rental units, but my mother tells me that the town has allocated money for an extensive cleanup.

Over the past decade, the entire Seacoast region boomed. Developers built enormous homes back within the woods and right on New Hampshire’s 9-mile coastline, and umpteen condominium complexes like the one where my parents live. Most of the funky cottages that lined Ocean Boulevard have been renovated and are going for exorbitant prices. Summertime traffic and crowds have grown, but so has year-round residence. Still, in the dead of winter, North Beach remains pretty quiet. Inlanders sometimes drive out to the beach on weekends when the weather is fair. But even when it’s not, you can always find a few people – with or without dogs – walking the beach at low tide.

       I have to turn around when I reach Great Boar’s Head, the large rocky promontory that separates North Beach from Hampton Beach. On the walk back, the late afternoon light hits the cottages that peer over the seawall like they’re lined up for a parade. But that’s still months away – the procession of surfers, from 20-somethings to graying boomers, kids with their bright plastic pails trailing behind harried moms yelling “come ova heah, ova heah,” the dads in t-shirts and baseball caps lugging coolers, chairs, blankets, towels, radios blasting.

It’s quiet now, the wide, flat sand mostly pristine but for a few sneaker and paw prints and the three-toed, splayed stamp of gulls. In one place, snails seem to have traced all the constellations in the sand. As above so below. There’s an endless trail of round white pebbles, a crab leg, strands of seaweed, bits of shells. Up over the water above the horizon, the waxing moon looks like a swimmer that has just lifted his head out of the water for air mid-crawl. A stiff, cold breeze picks up off the water, pushing seafoam up the slick sand like an advancing army of mutant sea creatures. It’s getting cold, and I pick up my pace. Back home, my family will be deciding on where to go for dinner. Back at the Jersey barriers, I turn around once to take in the view and then I head home.