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We have gone to Mexico almost every year since I was 14. My parents purchased a timeshare in Cancun, and then later in Playa Del Carmen, which has allowed us to return every year to a familiar view, a familiar bed, a familiar cerulean ocean. It has been an incredible gift. This fixed vantage point has offered interesting perspective as well, watching how a landscape, a town, a way of life can change year over year, decade over decade. What seemed unchanging however was the sugar-white sand and the rhythmic, ageless beating of wave on shore. As it ever was. Always the same. Always the same. Always the same. But then one year a hurricane came and scooped away mountains of sand, pulling it out into the depths, somewhere. The shore, once soft and shifting, became a treacherous, rocky terrain of foot slicing, toe stubbing rubble and broken coral. It took years for the sand to return. At first a thin layer coated the craggy, broken shore. Then the sand gradually filled in some of the deepe
