It’s seven o’clock on Thursday morning, July 4 at Tower Shores Beach in Delaware. I’m up and out the door for my customary walk along the shoreline.

The preparation for the day has already begun. This man has set up 12 chairs. That guy staked a tent into the sand that would be big enough to hold a circus event.

I looked up the beach at an endless line of chairs, umbrellas, and tents all holding sand spots for the holiday crowds who will begin their march to their staked-out territories in about an hour.

I said good morning to a singular person sitting in the midst of a line of empty beach chairs. He stared past me toward the ocean and said nothing in return. I walked past a half a football field of an outdoor furniture display on my way to the fishing area of the beach.

There I found Joe whom I met last summer and his friend, Tom. I hadn’t said a word to Joe in 12 months, but we picked up our conversation where we left off as if we had just spoken last week. We watched the lines of their four fishing rods with reserved anticipation. I thought about how this sport represents life. We wait in anticipation for something good to happen. Sometimes, we catch the big fish or attain the coveted prize and other times, we wait and we wait and nothing happens.

“Hey Rich, you wanna beer?” asked Tom.

I laughed. “No thanks. A bit too early for me.” He shifted the subject from one liquid to another.

“Look out there,” Tom said, pointing to the sea where the rising sun had beamed a brilliant circle of light upon the water. “People stare at computer screens all day. Then they stare at TV screens all night. No screen can ever show anybody anything more beautiful than what we’re looking at right now.”

As we talked about the weather and the retirement life, no bites on the rods were detected.

“That’s why they call it fishing and not catching,” said Joe with a chuckle.

Just about 25 sand steps away, the family villages were tethered into the beach and human behavior began to take place for as far as my eyes could see. Kids dug in the sand with plastic shovels. Teenaged girls lay on blankets in the latest swimwear that would never get wet. Women were reading books. Men were playing Cornhole. A few accomplished swimmers battled the waves and two little children played tag with the ebb and flow of the tide.

The division was obvious. On one end of Tower Shores were the fishermen and their pickup trucks loaded with angling tackle and buckets of bunker for bait. On the other end of the beach were mostly vacationing tourists with their canvas constructions harboring men, women, and children near the sounds of the surf.

The common denominator was the water that lures thousands to the beaches every summer. The sea with all its glory summons the souls of sun worshippers and those of the rod and reel so that all might ease the chaos of life’s responsibilities.

Whether it be the ocean, a lake or a river, the water is cathartic to the cluttered mind and refreshing to the tired body. Josh Groban sings a song called “River” where he celebrates the peace that nature’s water brings us.

“Some days I can’t say why I’m feeling lonely

And some days I am too proud to ask for help

And I stumble through the noise trying to find some peace

A stranger in the crowd, I lose myself

So I walk down to the river

Where the troubles, they can’t find me

Let the waters there remind me

The sun will be there when we wake.

“I walk down to the river

Though I might not understand it

It’s not always as we planned it

But we grow stronger when we break.”

We grow stronger after the confrontations of life’s challenges when we get within a few footsteps of the sea, lake or river by absorbing the vibrations of the water’s energy.

At the beach, anticipation is greater than expectation. The fishermen slow down their body clocks and wait with great patience, but to hook a fish is never the expectation.

It’s all about being one with the water to fully experience nature’s life-giving resource.

In the tent villages, it’s the Great Escape, leaving the work and school world behind to be near the water, to rest, to play, to erase the mayhem and madness and to relax with friends and family.

The fisherman recalls his childhood memories holding a small spinning rod with a push button reel and red and white bobber floating on a pond. Now he watches his 10- foot surf pole standing tall in a sand tube. He looks across the sea and he is amazed how time has passed so quickly ever since that bobber darted underwater and he caught his first sunfish.

A father under a village tent dotes over his daughter who could be building her first sand castle. He must be thinking, “I’m going to miss these days.”

American poet, Walt Whitman walked the beach at night alone by his home. He suggests that the sounds of the waves were an invitation to come to the all-inclusive womb of the universe.

“All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, and future — the vast similitude spans them … and shall forever span them and hold and enclose them.”

Like you, I have been birthed from water inside the womb. Like Whitman, I seek to be in Mother Nature’s womb “where the troubles, they can’t find me” and “let the waters there remind me” of a place I know I’ve been before.

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com.