Winter is on the way.
How do I know this? Well, the date on the calendar, for one thing, tells me we are in the last few months of 2018. Soon enough the days will grow cooler, even colder and the trees will be stripped of their foliage helped by the sharp winds blowing off the sea, and the rain will undoubtedly set in for days, even weeks, and perhaps the world will turn white.
The days will be dark and long, days of bundling up in thick coats and scarves, and hats and gloves, wrapped up against the cold and rain, and even snow. On those days it will feel, as it always does, that winter will not end, that the darkness will never cease. That never again will the sun warm our bones, or the water feel warm against our skin.
It's on those days that I will remember days like today.
A day to walk on the beach, listening to the waves crash on the shore, paddling my feet in the warm ocean. Feeling the sun on my skin, relishing the final moments of a long hot summer which has managed to extend into the end of autumn.
It's on bad days, when nothing is right and there seems to be no hope for the future that we can remember the days when life was great, knowing that just as the tide comes in and out, in and out, in and out every day, the sad moments won't last and good times will return.
There will be warm days again, even when the world has chilled our bodies and our hearts and even our spirits to the core. Even when there seems to be no hope in life, we will remember days like this when life and spirits were high and all was well with the world.
How do we know this? Well, if we've been given good days in the past we surely will receive them again. For me, that just makes sense. It's the circle of life. It's all a matter of faith, and hope.