Water and Light
It’s a beautiful day here in Dana Point - not that I have ever seen an ugly day here, but it is particularly sunny and somewhat warm today which definitely motivates me to get to the beach and into the water. Yesterday was nice too but after the heavy rains this weekend, I wanted to give the water a chance to clean itself up from all the runoff. I ran through Doheny yesterday and the inshore water looked distinctly brown.
The water north of the Point that borders the south of the Strand and Salt Creek does tend to be cleaner. Looking at the webcams today, the water at the Strand looked very attractive. However, the webcam does not reveal the true situation but I happily ignore that fact today. When I look at the webcam view of the Strand and Salt Creek, it paints a picture of exactly the place I want to be right now. It looks like perfect conditions. Small surf, light wind and sun.
I head out at about 12:30 and the parking lot seems more populated than normal. I walk from my car to the stairs and I quickly notice that something is missing. I realize I left my pack in the car. However as I contemplate going back to get it, I just wonder why I think I would ever need it? Every day I bring it for peace of mind to know that if I really need it, I have a towel and warmer clothes protecting me from hypothermia and every day this season I never use these things. Judging by how today looks and feels, it will be no different on this swim. So I go back to my car and just stash my shirt in the pickup bed so I don’t have to leave it on the beach.
The walk down the stairs is just lovely. When I get near the shore I notice that the lifeguard hut is manned…or actually womanned. This makes me happy. It’s just another milestone that reminds me that Summer is nigh. There is also a lot of construction activity at the base of the ramp. There are a couple large tractors and a truck manipulating large boulders at the edge of the sand. In fact they have blocked off the road here making the ramp inaccessible. I scramble down the boulders near the lifeguard hut to get to the beach and avoid the heavy machinery.
It’s super low tide and this beach looks totally blissful. I put my feet in the water and bliss might not be the word I use to describe this sensation. It’s not terrible but it is cold. I don’t think we have lost ground in the water temperature department since last week but it certainly doesn’t seem like we have gained much either. Hard to say for sure until I start swimming.
I do like not having to deal with stashing my pack and just walking straight out to the water. This might become a thing. Then again, air temps are due to fall quite a bit come Thursday. We’re not going to think about that right now.
I head out toward whatever surf there is one might find here which isn’t much. I’m belly deep and a wave breaks several feet in front of me and that is my cue to dive under the surface and get wet. It’s cold but not too much so. My arms feel the shock of cold water but it doesn’t take my breath away as it sometimes can when it is colder. I head south and try to bring my mind and thoughts into sync with my stroke and the water.
It feels easy to relax and lose myself in the momentum. The water is a lovely light sky blue today. However every now and then it does seem a little grungy and I just try to block the grunge out. The water temperature fluctuations can be quite extreme. There are a couple patches that feel so so cold but lots and lots of warm stretches that cancel out the cold’s ability to penetrate my core. All in all it is great.
I aim to just lose myself in this water and this light. As far as I can tell that’s all that is here. Water and light. It is inviting me to let go of my terrestrial concerns. None of them are actionable or particularly relevant out here. In this water beyond the surf and crowds lies a vast expanse large enough it seems to absorb every burden if only just for a while.
I’m thinking of this past Easter just a couple days ago now. I participate in a fairly mainstream Southern California Christian community. I love the people but by the time the day was over I felt spiritually exhausted on this day that is supposed to be the highest of holy days. I just can’t align with the literalism and exactitude of the worldview presented in the Easter service. I mean it’s not bad or particularly disagreeable. It’s just not where I’m at. I feel alienated from the God I’m supposed to visualize in a certain way in my head. I’m trying to pass all of these words and symbols through a sort of translation layer in my head that transforms the narrative into something I can embrace and it’s just distracting me from what I think probably really matters which is something I can’t put my finger on. Something I can’t even begin to explain. Something that is dynamic and so completely real but so completely removed from any kind of precise language.
Yesterday (Monday) I wake up feeling all of this hanging over me like a load of bricks. However at some point in the afternoon, I feel a lightness come over me. It’s just a sort of resolve and permission to let the words and literalism of the symbols go and embrace the numinousness of what lies beneath all of them. It all hit me after I read a chapter in the bible. It was the last chapter of 2nd Thessalonians. Nothing ground breaking per se but just got me thinking of the Apostle Paul and what must have been going through his first century Roman head when he was writing this. I think he was steeped in the numinous. He’s just writing this letter that we have all taken and cast into stone but to him its probably just a letter and not a theological treatise. There was something much much bigger than the words that he was breathing in and somehow I catch this same breath. I want to breath more of this out here in this water and light. Perhaps that is exactly what I am swimming in. Maybe that’s all that is really here.
The rest of the swim is great. The north end of the beach when I stop to turn around feels downright disgusting with some sort of stuff that I don’t even want to describe floating toward the top of the water. How about that water and light?
I get back to the beach and the construction activity seems like it has increased to the point that I can’t really scramble back to the road unless I want to climb this large wall of boulders. Why would I want to do that when I could alternatively walk a bit further down this beautiful beach to the next exit up the middle of the beach front housing community? So I do just that and it takes all that I have to make that exit and not just keep walking down the beach.
