Last night, on the way home from my folks, we decided to take a quick stop at the beach for a walk.

As we started walking, the sun began to set, filling the sky from horizon to horizon with dramatic textured color. Pinks and blues and greens and other colors I’m not qualified to name layered the sky. On the sand, a heavy mist hid all but the closest buildings.

In short, it was beautiful.

Even better, flocks of seagulls had landed at the water’s edge. The boys and I ran through them, flapping our arms. Weirdly, the seagulls didn’t squawk. They just flew up, circled around, and landed again.

After a few circles, I went back to my wife, and we watched the boys chase through the birds.

We wandered the beach for a while without seeing another soul, and then spotted a guy doing Tai Chi. I explained to the boys briefly about Tai Chi. My wife started talking about meditation and how peaceful the beach was and what a perfect place to be doing Tai Chi, and wouldn’t it be a fun thing to learn…

Too late.

The guy was standing in the middle of a flock of seagulls, and my youngest had focused on them. Arms extended, he ran silently toward him, like WWI airplanes zooming in for the kill.

My wife started shouting for him to come back, but I interrupted her. “The shouting’ll be worse than the seagulls.”

She nodded, and we watched the Tai Chi guy disappear in a cloud of flapping feathers.

My son jogged back, grinning.

To his credit, the Tai Chi guy never broke form, but continued his slow concentrated movements.

There’s nothing quite so peaceful as a beach.