by Emily Strasser
May 2020

         Last summer, half a year ago, or a lifetime, I spent mornings with coffee and a book perched on the wall overlooking Bestouan Beach, reading Virginia Woolf and thinking about climate change. Mostly though, after a depressed winter spent in one of the most sun-deprived regions of my country, I luxuriated in the world-famous light of southern France, and I watched the life of the beach below. I came to know the rhythms and the regulars—the locals and older folks who showed up early to snorkel or drift in dreamy circles in the cerulean waters, Camargo’s own director, who swam laps at dawn, a young mother who stood, thigh deep, letting her baby splash feet in the water as she gazed out to the horizon. The tourists filling up the beach by mid-morning, laying down woven Turkish cotton towels, bronzing bare breasts, kids churning up the shallows as they shouted in bright voices. I studied the way people walked tender-footed on the pebbled beach, tipped-forward, halting and bird-like. I watched the color of the water change as the sun climbed, from pale blue to sparkling turquoise to silvered opaque at dusk.

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