Tonight, like a dream. Swimming in the pool at the house I’m watching over for the summer … a man was out fishing in the low tide. He’d rowed up to the sandbar on a small kayak. He threw cast after cast but I never saw him catch anything. I swam. Under the wide open sky, no cage overhead to stop the pine needles from the nearby Australian pines from floating down every now and again.

Nothing between me and sky and clouds and … my lovely osprey. How can a human be so in love? With a bird? But I am. I coo to him (or her) en francais, not caring what the neighbors think. I say, “Bonjour, ma petite. Ne cri pas. My honeybunch.” I’m like a looney-tune. I swim.

Remnants of something — a crab? — left off the side of the pool, where many crane-like, stork-like birds come to scout lizards or perhaps drink the water, one, crazily, even when I was swimming, ventured close.

Pelicans, seagulls, waterfowl of every kind, winging their way back to nests. The pool seems to be directly under their nightly flight path.

Luxuriating in the water. Watching the clouds and loving those moments when the osprey fly in so close over the pool that I feel I could reach them (and I pray they don’t drop any, um, thing … notably that fish in their talons). Every now and again, Mr. (or is it Ms.?) Osprey turns his head to look at me. “I’m not dinner,” I remind him. Their diet is 95% fish, you know. I looked it up.

It’s magic here. On the Intracoastal. Which I’d choose any day over a place on the beach.

I think a woman could find her best self here. Recall the woman she might have left behind while off searching for love and fortune. Recall the woman who isn’t afraid of never being married again. Who doesn’t mind, really, the uncertain future.

Recall the woman who doesn’t give a damn about anything else but the feeling of a light wind coming from the west wrapping around her bare skin as she steps out of the dreamy, warm, water. The air almost cool. The sun, now setting. The fisherman moving back toward his kayak.

It’s easy to do here: remembering who you were, liking who you are, and looking forward to who you yet will be. That’s the magic of this place.