You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Beach.
At the end of the Earth, where the sand ends and the waves begin, there lies an aquatic boundary.
So much beauty all condensed into one space. Sunshine and salt air and spectacular blue-green water. Waves and sea lions and surfers.
The beach is like visual caffeine. It’s like dumping an entire bag of Star Bucks into one gigantic Mr. Coffee filter and brewing it all at once.
This vacation has been filled with many beaches. San Diego. Los Angeles. Carmel.
It’s been one part hallucination, one part cardio vascular activity.
I move fast enough to get my heart beating, not fast enough to lose sight of where I’m exercising.
I’ve walked in Encinitas. I’ve walked in Ventura County. I’ve walked in Carmel.
Each beach has its own characteristics, but they all have one thing in common.
Beautiful, lavish beach homes on the East side of the beach and expansive, majestic ocean to the West.
Of the three beaches, Carmel Beach, to me, is the most pristine. Perhaps I find it so powerful because I grew up here. Perhaps it’s the romance of this mile long stretch of sand. Perhaps it’s the icy, turbulent water that makes swimmers think twice before entering. Maybe it’s the memories I have over four decades of a place that essentially has not changed.
The minute you step onto the sand below Scenic Drive you smell the kelp that has floated in with the tide. The current flows to the south and the kelp washes ashore here.
Sadly, on many a day, this 100 yards of beach stinks like a fermenting sea weed dump. There are thousands of little sand flies that buzz here, hovering over the decaying kelp like microscopic buzzards. As you walk through this stretch you have to navigate through smelly clumps of unpleasant stench. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember.
But move past this 100 yards, a 30 second walk, and the sea weed nastiness vanishes and the smell of the ocean fills your nostrils. The air is thick with salt and a touch of spray. The majesty of the Pacific and Carmel feeds your spirit.
The visual is so intense it’s hard to take it all in at one time.
I scan the horizon first, looking to that spot where the sky and the water merge as one. This is the place that guided Columbus to the new world. His crew was scared they would fall over the edge.
I scan the distance as the sun sparkles off the waves. The lights dance in a hypnotic array, like a mirrored ball spinning in a 70’s discotheque.
I direct my gaze beyond the breakers to a floating kelp forest rich with sea life. Look long enough and you will spy a sea otter on his back, prying open an abalone with a rock.
Closer to the waves, surfers sit on boards. They bob like corks in a peaceful swell. They stare at the next set rolling in. They wait and wait. It’s an endless summer on an undulating dream.
I look at my feet as I walk close to the surf. The sand here is hard and slightly inclined so the surf races up hill and then, forced by gravity, quickly melts into the sand. The beach here is spotted with shells and bits of charred wood that have washed up from elsewhere.
I see dog prints and foot prints and bird tracks. The indentations in the sand are new, but they could be as old as the sea, like a prehistoric marker in time.
Sea gulls and all manner of birds flock to this beach. They eye you hoping you will throw down a blanket with a picnic basket. They are flying pirates, soaring burglars who will steal a sandwich in the blink of an eye.
Dogs run loose here, prancing in the surf and chasing tennis balls thrown into the waves. Big dogs sniff little dogs who yap at medium-sized dogs.
If you don’t like dogs at the beach don’t come to Carmel.
For me, a golden labrador sopping wet with a tennis ball in its mouth is a timeless reminder of my youth.
I’ve been coming to this beach since the late 70’s and except for the clothes and the hairdoos, nothing has changed.
The dogs the people the sand the sea weed. It’s the same. Beautiful and breath-taking.
I walk to the top of the dune where Ocean Avenue dead ends at the sand. Ocean avenue is the main street in town. From the shore, it rises up a steep hill, cutting into a cottage like fairy town where espresso shops and art galleries line the streets.
When I grew up here, it was illegal to eat ice cream on the sidewalk.
Clint Eastwood became mayor and changed all that.
Can you imagine that campaign. Vote for Clint and nobody gets hurt. Now you can eat ice cream without fear of retribution, retaliation or reciprocity.
The man with no name changed a desert culture in this story book village.
I don’t even know what the hell that means.
While the street is the same and the dunes are the same and the view is the same, there is a new observation platform for sitting and taking photos.
A ten foot platform with a bench. In Carmel, that’s progress. Probably needed a city-wide referendum to build it.
And then there are the cypress trees at the top of the dune. They’ve been here forever. They look like multi-armed driftwood monsters rising out of the sand.
They are black and white Ansel Adams masterpieces waiting to be captured for all eternity.
As has always been the case, people pose for pictures in front of them.
I hear French and German and Asian languages around the trees. It’s the same on this morning as it has always been, as tourists take turns capturing this moment in life.
What they don’t realize is that this moment never changes. This vista is timeless. I have seen this same image a thousand times. The people come and go, but the sand and surf and Ocean Avenue never change.
I walk to the far end of the beach where Pebble Beach is located. By car, you have to pay a $10 entry fee. But if you walk on Carmel Beach you can bypass the gate and walk along one of the most beautiful holes in all of golf, the 9th hole.
Out of bounds is the sand and the pacific. As I walk toward the end of the beach, you can see golfers above on the green. They take time, inhaling the vista and the beauty from the cliff. At 500 dollars a round, you had better enjoy the moment.
Growing up here, I’ve played these courses. I didn’t realize how great I had it, till I played some local clubs elsewhere.
The course in Grand Rapids, Michigan compared to Pebble Beach is like a 67 VW Bug compared to a 2013 Ferrari.
As I return to my truck, my bare feet are colored gray by a sand fine as powder.
I realize that I’m growing older, but this is forever. My children and their children can come to this very spot and see this very sight in 50 years and it will still be here.
The dog tracks will be here and the kelp will be here and the abalone cracking sea otters.
They too will have to wipe grey colored talcum powder like sand from their toes before getting in their cars.
Time marches on, but beauty in this place lasts forever.
Life’s Crazy™