One afternoon the writer observed a splendid sand-colored dog, roughly the conformation of an Airedale but not as large, disorganizing a whole block of upper Broadway with a rapid-fire display of good-humored antics.
The brief joint journey of the endangered brown pelican and the S.U.V.-encased biologist gets at the mushy meaning of the word "pristine," which is used -- often with far more emotion than precision -- to describe America's national parks, including this splendid stretch of sand off the Gulf Coast of Texas.
He has suffered so much (eight months in hospital, 12 operations, his body one great wound) that, reading his splendid autobiography Blood and Sand, I tell him, I felt like biting on a rag during the chapter describing his rehabilitation.
Anywhere you turn you see splendid nature of powdery sand beach and pristine water.
Last year the tired beach-front chandlery which had been peddling buckets, spades and crab lines for years was transformed – not without some local resistance – into five splendid beach huts that spill on to the sand.
"A South African Childhood" (1954) evokes the sun-drenched Transvaal landscape in lyrical prose; "Pula!" (1979) recounts a visit to Botswana in a narrative that brims with splendid descriptions: the Kalahari desert is a "vast sand-tray" in which thorn trees are "lead toys stuck upright".
Many of these splendid buildings have disappeared beneath the desert's encroaching sands.
A splendid up and down from his second attempt in the sand, rolling it into the centre of the cup.
Repeatedly sanded, gouged, and folded, these pieces have endured a level of creative violence that makes their splendid final state all the more ravishing.
And the summer season of 2008 opened with splendid hot, dry, sunny weather, temperatures up to 34C, a clean sparkling sea, but at San Cataldo, an ever-shrinking base of sand from which to enjoy it.
