Dreams Completed and Dreams Born

By: Sam MacDonald

I’m a travel bug. I always want to go somewhere new, but one place I’ll always want to go back to is the beach. There’s just something about the beach that gives me this sense of peace. I don't really know how to describe it, but something about the beach just makes me smile.

Up until traveling to England, I hadn’t really ever been to a beach that I couldn’t be in a swimsuit and had to keep my shoes on. Before, I thought that the ‘magic’ of the beach would not be there. This magic was different, but I still felt it, especially at St. Michael’s Mount.

I’m not sure where exactly in the tidal shift we arrived at St. Michael’s; it was either the tail end of low tide or the very beginning of high tide, either way, there was this huge expanse of beach. Miles and miles of hard packed sand.

People were out with their families and their dogs. It was windy and a little bit cold and, yet, there were a dozens of people out enjoying the day.

I grew up on a horse farm, and I remember my mom always talked about how one of her dreams was to ride a horse on the beach. She planted this same dream in me. To me, this dream happened in a tropical location, galloping down the beach and in the surf, possibly bareback and in a swimsuit.

I still want to do that. But, the day we went to St. Michael’s, there was this woman and her horse just leisurely walking up the beach. The moment I saw them, I knew that this was something that I wanted to do.

Traveling is such a big goal in my life; one of my life goals is to travel to every country in the world.

It’s funny, because every time I travel I think that my list of dreams and goals will shrink. And, while I do get to cross a lot of stuff off my list, every time I go somewhere new, I find something else that I want to do and the list grows. In Costa Rica learning to surf was added, in the Virgin Islands my goal to see a sea turtle was reaffirmed and in England I not only want to ride a horse on a beach, but I realized how badly I want to live abroad.