Illustration by Ali Mac
An illustration of people on a beach
Is life a beach? If so, maybe the beach that life is lies to the southeast of Lake Harriet. That’s the cozy one, nestled among houses, where two paths—one bike, one walking—bring all the world through the narrow gap between the creek and a lush, scrubby berm of lawn and a wide beige sand plain.
Life in a day at this beach begins before the sun comes up. Runners emerge like stick figures in a cloud of their own blur. Swift, efficient, alone. Do they bring the sun? Because next it rises, turning the big circle of water called Harriet mirror-gray. The sun burns pale pinprick beams through the cottonwood canopy and invites robins, crows, blackbirds, and a quiver-nosed bunny or three all to look what the eternal west wind blew into the lakeweed-fringed ruffle of water meeting sand.
Sun established, now come the dog walkers, some carrying travel mugs with tea bag tags flapping. Some are slow alongside creaky white-whiskered grandpa pooches, some trot beside hounds in spruce performance-mesh harnesses. The dog walkers who know one another gather between the two paths, making sudden stars and rings and clumps, and the dogs touch noses; they know each other, too.
Next, toddlers arrive, swim-diapered and sand-curious. Above, motionless in the tree, is a juvenile bald eagle, brown and awkward, parked by parents who seem to have given orders: Don’t move; stay out of trouble; we’ll get dinner and come back.
Exit toddlers, exit the books their parents brought and opened but did not read and closed with sand in their pages. Enter the real children, the ones with games and plans and rules. Sandcastles sprout up, moats dredge down till stinking black sand is discovered. Moats join; castles fall to fits of emotion or inadequate architectural supports or both.
Because this is Harriet’s southeast beach and the sun sets to the west, the summer sunset here is four hours long. It starts as broiling lemon, transitions to radiant tangerine, dies as pink blush that goes all lavender. Now? Romance. Older romance, hand in knobby hand, sometimes one in a wheelchair, seated at the benches. Newer romance, crouched knee to knee on the grass. Romantic beverages, in frozen metal double-walled tumblers, or even out in the open, jade-green bottles holding something from Spain.
Once blue night descends, Harriet’s southeast beach is like a hallway at a hotel full of parties as groups bubbling with laughter pass through on their pilgrimage from one backyard to another. At deep night, kisses under the moon from couples up to their ankles. Cars hastily park, and determined skinny-dippers race to the water’s edge, strip, holler—or sink in in mellow silence.
Finally, for a brief quiet hour, this beach is nothing but ancient sounds, only the chirp of crickets, only the wind, only the lap, lap, lap of quiet water, steady on a gentle shore. If life is a beach, surely it’s one as ordinary, as extraordinary, as this?
Go Do It
1. Grab to-go lunch. Broders’ Cucina at 50th and Penn has great sandwiches, and its sister shop Terzo has a great porchetta. Or, the Brasa at 46th and Bryant has a chicken sandwich with green sauce that’s beach-perfect. In actual Linden Hills, the butcher-made sandwiches at Clancey’s are divine, as are the fried chicken sandwiches from Tilia.
2. Take your haul to Lake Harriet’s southeast beach and park on the street—just don’t start driving on the parkway, or you’ll have to go all the way around!
3. Unpack your beach chairs, sand pails and shovels, and a steady gaze—only the north beach is staffed by lifeguards.
