Beach Dancers

I looked out at the corduroy sea at midmorning, long lines of waves queueing to crash against rocks and tower with waving fronds of froth.  Such an ocean it was, rocking itself to and fro and seeming to slap its hands together, one set of waves put against another, currents interlacing and joining one another in a hissing madness.

Every person at the shore was watching waves, walking automatically or sitting on rock humps and juts to admire turbulence and order intertwining like wrestling lovers.

A small girl was bent over dangling her fingertips in a small tidepool of ocean water on the beach sand, as if she were playing a keyboard.  She looked to the side, listening? or to watch dogs and people nearby.  But, her fingers in the water kept playing. I might have heard a few notes.  Or it might have been the sandpipers racing at the waters edge, hungry to catch invisible prey only they could hear.  

A dog with three legs ran toward me and then past, intent on the flat wide sand where other dogs were chasing tennis balls flung into the surf.  One of them, fluffy and elderly, a golden retriever on a leash, was spotted by a dancing girl who ran to the dog and circled it, giddy in the bright sun, the sight of the smiling dog, and her own light smallness.  Adults eyed the dog closely, surrounded as he was by the movements of the small girl inclined to pirouette and careen with wild abandon.  The dog might much rather have been hunting ducks in the water hazards where the golfers were yelling, "Fore!" He held his ground and the girl twirled away, a sprite with a bubbling spirit.

A young woman posed between her friend and the wide arch of blonde beach and seething surf, her arms extended like plane wings, digitally captured in as many pixels as waves that broke beyond her.  Once captured, she and her friend checked the image with heads bent together, and the wild smashing currents at Pt Joe took up the dance the small girl had left off.

Summer to Fall: The Bay is Changing

My view of the earth, the part I can see from my chair here, is turning gradually away from the sun.  The sun, a blazing mass of hydrogen with shooting tendrils of gas that arch far out into dry cold space, is roasting our blue planet wherever it shines.  I hear it sizzle if I listen.

I am riding the grand blue ball eastward, feeling the cooling breath of twilight ahead.  Across the way, a short distance from my window, the last light of the evening is setting the leaves of my neighbors' trees aflame with light, a searing light beaming horizontally, parallel to the street.  The wind has died down for now, and I can hear the din of distant waves kicking up along the long curved shoreline.

Yesterday, we stood on Monterey State Beach and watched the sweep of waves bubbling and foaming back and forth across the tanned, curvaceous swells of packed sand.  They eddied back out again in wide ripping currents that made an effervescent hiss.  I felt an increased intensity of energy in the sea, building and changing with the season.  It's a mean ocean, beautiful as it is.  Tons of water, undertow, cross currents and riptides must be watched as well as wind gusts, logs and kelp washing in and out of the water's edge.  Those who are lax or inattentive are sometimes lost.

We parked above the beach, strode like giants down the steep dune to the more level beach below and then headed north, eyeing the waves, running for higher ground when they rushed up to us.

After a few miles at a steady pace heading north on the wet sloping sand, we trudged back up a steep dune and looked back to take a look at the vista spread before us.  The water was a dark titanium blue and a bobbing cluster of small fishing boats out in search of sea bass were collected a mile offshore.  Waves' constant muffled low roar was the voice of nature in full cry.  A scuffing wind made small white crests, brisk enough for small sailboats to keel over before it.

One man, dwarfed by the vista and expanse of ocean, stood alone below us, a solitary figure, buffeted by the wind.  He looked ahead to the tossing seas and boats, alone with his thoughts, with the elements of nature constantly jostling for his attention.  Tides and bright sun never leave you untended, always demand your respect.  You may seek solitude in nature, but, unlike a place built by people to segregate, silence or confine, nature is always vigorous and stimulating in constantly changing ways.

It's No Place To Count

All tired out from errands and appointments, I drove in silence, thinking about the minutiae of the day.  I let my car find its own way.  With very little guidance, she rolled placidly to the sea and parked neatly parallel to the shoreline fence, facing south.  I turned the key off, set the brake, sat back.

I sighed, unbuckled my seatbelt, sagged in the seat, turned to have a look around.  I didn't pay attention to anything much.  I sat like that for many minutes.

A man ran by, preoccupied with the burdensome task of monitoring his running effort.  He appeared to my right and disappeared to my left as I looked west beyond the split-rail fence.  Immediately, he was gone and I instantly forgot him.

I witnessed hundreds of dozens more waves and the remnants of waves hitting waves, but it was as if they were seen by someone else.  I didn't have enough energy or the inclination to notice much at first; I'd seen it before hundreds of times.  Waves, ocean, more waves, and more waves.

A couple walked past, appearing on the right and then gone on the left, not talking, walking in lockstep, their feet crunching in synchrony, like a metronome.  

I shifted my gaze to the roadway, away from the shifting currents and waves.  My car's readings told me that it was 6 PM, the air 60 degrees.  Each runner going by was monitoring their pace or the number of miles they had run, tenths of miles to go.  Cyclists checked their odometers and knew their gear inches, their cadence, the force of the headwind, the watts they were producing as they pedaled.  Engineers driving by in their work trucks looked at the road ahead, the density of the asphalt, the composition of the cement, the grade percentage of the hills.  It was a 2 to 4 percent slope; the road had 5 degree cambered corners and 8 to 10 inches of falloff to the unpaved shoulder.  The sun was going to set at 7:17 PM and the high tide had just peaked at 5:59 PM.  The moon was due to rise at 7:47 PM, an hour and 47 minutes later, precisely.

I looked back to the sea, and I thought about the immeasurable waves, watched them roll to shore in regiments, one after another.  They were lined up for miles out to sea, without end.  It would be madness to count them and evaluate their worth by the tonnage of water, number of droplets in each spraying crest, or decibels of sound produced by each square meter of water hitting each ton of rock.

I smiled.  There it was, as always:  Nature in its boldest and most immeasurable and uncontrollable form:  The sea.

My mind had made a transition from the restless confinement and servitude of daily life to boundless wonder and fascination.  The movement and play of light on the endlessly varying surface of the enormous ocean acted like a powerful medicine and taken away my stress and fatigue.  I was refreshed and invigorated again.

At the edge of the ocean, for all time, there is a symphony of light, movement and sound made by waves, intersections of waves, ripples, wavelets, splashes, bubbles, rivulets, currents, countercurrents, rip tides, foam and spray.

Thank God, the ocean is boundless and embodies complexity, size and dimensions that root us to the ground to stand gape-mouthed and awed.  What is there to measure there?  Your happiness?  Your respect and admiration?  Its beauty?

So, after playing slave to my calendar, my watch and my pocketbook, there I was sitting in my car -- thanking her for having the good sense to ferry me there -- and let the roar and thunder of the ocean drown out the impulse of my mind to quantify what I saw:  Infinity.

Pacific's Wild Horses

We live under a cotton-batting sky, all in shreds and tangles, drenched and dripping.  No sense of when the sun will be visible again.  I continue to feel thrilled by the scope of wind, sky and sea, all thrashing around with wild abandon.  The roads and thoroughfares in town are showing signs of succumbing to the forces of the elements.  Cracks and pot holes have widened and deepened; rain has filled them and washed out any loose fill, exposed dirt thrown around and rocks strewn by passing cars. 

The sea wall along the ocean has been pounded relentlessly by high surf for the entire week.  Where, in the summer months, "surf" amounted to a languid swishing gurgle, the waves are throwing everything into the fray.  Boulders, kelp, driftwood - who knows what else - are all battering, crunching and tearing up stationary surfaces.  Waves come stampeding in like insane racehorses that snort and kick and fling themselves wildly, all crazy with energy. 

I've always been drawn to water, feel a need to watch it and understand it.  What is most compelling about moving masses of water, like storm waves and large rivers, is the chaos at their hearts.  A huge wave comes rolling in for a long time from the horizon, visible as a lumpy shifting form way out there, miles away.  The big red weather buoys lift and then disappear in the troughs and hills of the Pacific when the roller passes.  It's so cold, so deep and so mysteriously forbidding, all that force and energy.  You see big rollers steaming in, mounting up and tumbling with roaring and foaming, grasping fingers all chaotic and rabid.  The random interplay of crashing breakers and the zillions of frothing bubbles makes wavelets, waterfalls, fountains, streams and spray patterns that never repeat themselves exactly the same way again.  It is an indescribable beauty that somehow must be described to be comprehended and believed. 

I have stood every day this week during these storms and watched, completely fascinated and absorbed by the spectacle of storm surf smashing itself against the rocky coast.  It never ever gets old.  It's always exciting and incredible.  Because if I, 98-degree weak little me, were to venture out there, I would be the laughingstock of the whole ocean.  I have not even the slightest illusion of doing that, but I love it beyond compare.