“Sure Bird”
Bunche Beach. Fort Myers, FL.
12-Jan.-2025
It was January when my husband and I moved into our new home in Fort Myers, Florida. We were freshly married—two people starting a life together in a place that was brand new to both of us.
After years of long distance—a common plight for early-career wildlife biologists—it was strange finally being in the same place again. We knew we were two pieces that fit together perfectly. We were just trying to find the rhythm of daily life together again.
So one afternoon, on a whim, we went to the one place we both had always shared a deep connection with—the outdoors.
A short drive from our house was Bunche Beach, a little wilder and less touristy than most of the beaches nearby. The sun was shining and the water was warm and wadable. Both of us grew up on Florida’s east coast, where “warm and wadable” are not common descriptions of the ocean—and honestly, they’re a little suspicious.
This wasn’t a beach day we had planned. We’d stopped on the way home from running errands, both of us still in plain clothes—me in shorts and a t-shirt, Christian in jeans, both of us in sneakers.
We walked out onto the crisp white sand, found a spot to kick off our shoes and peel off our socks, the dreadful experience of putting them back on with sandy toes a problem for later.
Hand in hand, we wandered the shoreline. Sometimes we talked about what we were seeing, sometimes we just watched quietly.
Before long, a sandbar stretching out from the shoreline caught my eye. I waded straight into the warm water, algae-riddled sand squishing between my toes, and dragged Christian along with me. He protested at first—he was wearing jeans, after all—but he can’t fight me for long.
So there we were: two newlyweds, knee-deep in the water, pants soaked, fully immersed in this new place—literally.
The sandbar curved in a long crescent away from the beach before looping back toward shore. As we followed it around, we came across a noisy gathering of shorebirds perched on a high patch of sand near the northern tip.
Ruddy turnstones, black skimmers, and the ones with the terrible hairline—royal terns, I think–moved with the tide, weaving in and out of the surf, beaks stabbing into the sand in search of something edible. Others were deep into social hour—calling, posturing, showing off.
Christian and I followed suit. We danced, we splashed each other, plunged our hands into the sand looking for hidden treasures, and generally behaved like two people with absolutely no responsibilities for the afternoon.
By the time we reached the shoreline again, we’d drifted much farther down the beach, near the mouth of a shallow cove. The water there was verdant and algae-filled, and it carried that unmistakable estuarine smell—rich, a little funky, and completely alive.
I plopped straight down into the sand and pulled my sketchbook from my backpack.
That’s when I noticed him.
A single shorebird wading through the shallows. I still don’t know exactly what species he was—someone more familiar with coastal birds could probably tell you—but something about him caught my attention.
Maybe it was the quiet confidence with which he moved through the water. The calm, deliberate steps. The way he seemed perfectly at ease in this place.
In that moment he felt like the opposite of me—waterlogged, slightly exhausted from our frantic frolicking, eyes still bright and searching for the next adventure.
But maybe we weren’t opposites after all. Maybe we were just two sides of the same coin. Wild and rooted, in our own ways.
And equally free.
