The water called my name today, so I answered. All morning long it whispered to me the way it does from time to time:

"Come on down to the seaside, Youngblood."

So when lunch time rolled around I climbed in the Tangerine Dream and headed for Seabrook. There's a Dairy Queen down there, right at the bay's edge, where they make a mean chocolate malt and the seagulls vie for every stray scrap of french-fry.

I always get away from the office during my lunch hour. It may only be to run errands, but I always get away. That's an hour that I give back to myself, some time I reclaim for the soul. My job advances at a frantic pace; I am continually reacting to the needs of the moment, usually monitoring several missions at the same time. I need that hour away from the job to reflect and regroup. You can count on the fact that every work day, when the clock reaches 1100 Central, the Dream and I are hitting the road.

It's a beautiful drive to Seabrook via winding country roads that meander through Bay Area Park and Armand Bayou Nature Center. All the trees are green and full, although it's evident that some are readying for the change in season and putting on their autumn coats. Wildflowers still bloom beside the road, peeking up yellow, pink, blue, and white. Autumn nips at me through my open window, yet the countryside sprawls lush and green in one last act of defiance.

As I pass the park I can see that the duck pond reconstruction is continuing on schedule. They're laying the rebar in the bottom today in preparation for pouring the cement. At the moment, though, the workers are taking a break, sitting beneath the oak tree at the edge of the pond. Thermos bottles and sandwich wrappings dot the landscape around them.

Two young squirrels scamper across the road near the entrance to Armand Bayou, one hot on the other's trail as if conducting some kind of fall celebration ritual. When they reach the esplanade the pursuer catches up to the pursued and they go rolling and tumbling, over and over in the grass, and then skinny straight up a tree to disappear into the fullness of its branches. Across the way, one lone vulture sits idly on a barbed wire fence, basking in the sunlight and waiting for something to die.

When I am finally standing by the water's edge with chocolate malt in hand, I close my eyes, face to the wind, and let the crisp coolness of the gusty breeze seep through me all the way to my bones.

The waves lap softly at my feet, seagulls screech overhead, and the briney smell of the bay water wafts through my nostrils, reminding me of the vast wetness from whence we came. In the distance, a flag slaps its harness against a steel pole - clang, clang, clang, clang - as if struggling to be free.

Ah, would that we were, I thought.

Clang, clang, clang, clang. "Come on down to the seaside, Youngblood."

Would that we both could just flap ourselves loose and follow the mysterious call of the wind and the sea.