Saturday night. She wants to see the surf at the island. An adventure. We can eat at Subway, she says. It’s not too bad, is the defense for the choice. Okay by me.

No prep, we jump in the car. Down Alton Gloor heading east and the sun is directly behind us. Its after six already. The light’s got that evening gold and everything in front of us is burning brass with the glare. And its the same on 511. I’m foolishly taking photos as we go–talk about distracted driving.

We gotta go there, I say passing the Ice House. Might be, but she’s more concerned with the madness of shooting pictures from behind the wheel. I’m not even looking at the camera and shoot. It can always be cropped.

Onto Highway 48 with the port to the south and now its got the glow. The glare is off the vehicles in front of us. Not that there are a lot. Taking Friday night to look at bigger than usual surf is not all that popular an idea, it turns out. We pass Amfels, which always looks to me like the set for a science fiction piece. Not so much as the oil refinery between Bishop and Kingsville looks at night, but almost as good. All those glowing lights in an obvious but unapparent order.

The water is up, we see, when we pass the boat ramp at San Martin Lake. The parking lot is shrunk to a postage stamp, but still there are quite a few people there. Well, fish do move around when the water’s disturbed. And here there’s land submerged that hasn’t been open to fish for a quite a while, maybe years.

We can’t see the Bahia Grande when you pass it heading east, now. The median wall blocks it off in our little Prius, not quite as low slung a vehicle as  the MG Dad came up with in the middle of our life in Greensboro, Indiana, but as low slug as I’ll ever want. On the south side of the road, of course, the canal between the bahia and the shipping channel is almost submerged. People are out there, parking hugged against the wall, but finding a place.

Port Isabel isn’t empty, but traffic is light. No photos here. Never trust a PI cop on traffic duty. You can get written up for spitting out the window, I’ve heard. The bay is up, the pilings under the fishing pier at Pirates’ Landing are very short above it. We try for Isla Blanca, but it’s shut down.

The loop past the Sheraton, we note, does not have any beach access parking, so we pull around to the second access on Gulf Boulevard, by Padre South where we stayed a free weekend during our second year teaching in Brownsville at–only the cost of a Sunday afternoon presentation on the wonders of owning time shares, two hours of iron willed nay-saying for me, which, oddly, I’ve come to regret now and again. What would a week on the beach for the last twenty-something years have been? Bad? Her brother and sister-in-law bought one a couple of years later and its been a good thing for them to take off every year the week after school lets out. Ah, profligate youth that does not look ahead.

This is a surprise: The island folks have pushed a hill of sand maybe six feet above the end of the access parking lot. A guard against a surge, we guess. We’d never come out during the really tough weather. We’ve always been busy gathering up the food and water and lights, boarding up the windows and snuggling down for a long summer’s nap.

The water’s churning when we see it at last, but a hundred yards from the foliated shore. People are down on the open flats of the uphill channel that must be the source for the sand pile on the parking lot. Bulldozers would have been working last night and today, I’d guess, to get all the access points ready, the breaches in the sea walls reinforced. She runs ahead, while I contemplate, then follow. I step onto the path around the parking lot hill and realize another man is coming from the other end, so I step into the foliage. “Something stickery in there,” I say to him as he passes. All in good fun.

Near the water, the roar is constant and rumbles in the stomach as well as on the beach. This is big water. I pick a perch on vegetation still holding the sand together, thick rubbery vines tramped and waterlogged into a mat by my fellow travelers and me. She goes out to challenge the surf, which at times runs up that hundred yards to wipe more sand from under the mat.

Now to watch.The outer bands of the hurricane run in nicely defined, pink fired cloud ridges. The surf runs up then vacates for the longest time. Foolish boys try the waves with a boogie board. I turn the camera to movie mode and record four minutes of random motion, people walking about, a guy shooting pictures of his family playing in the surf. A boy laying in the muddy sand, challenging the waves to run over him again.

Then an epiphamy. I record another four plus minute clip, this time making sure to keep something in the center of the the shot and to keep my mouth shut. I follow her with the lens as she walks toward the surf, then back as the surf runs towards and overtakes her. The boy laying down gets his wish as the water hits, and he runs for safety. I pan the horizon, three-hundred-sixty degrees as she disappears behind a dune, then follow her back down the sand and land on the surfer boys. Still three of them. I’m counting. The colors run to deep reds and purples. To deep. The light’s going. No gone. I look at the pictures I’ve taken and the last three are black. Time to go.

Subway beckons.