All the Colors We Cannot See

Happy Thanksgiving. What a beautiful Thanksgiving it is here in Dana Point. Yesterday was amazing and I was sort of hoping that today would be more of the same. Ok, not “sort of.” I was totally hoping for it. However the weather forecast called for cloudy skies. I didn’t fully understand this because it’s supposed to be warm again and the surf forecast is talking about it being a beautiful day. What does this all mean?! Well when I got up, I quickly figured it out. There are these thin wispy clouds covering the sky. Not exactly covering because there is still lots of blue sky. It’s just beautiful and I knew it would be even more beautiful at the beach (it always is).

So at 8:45 I leave for the beach. It’s about 62 degrees out and sure enough when I get there it is absolutely gorgeous. The thin clouds dim the light just a bit but not too much and the clouds adds texture and vibrance to the sky and everything looks full and complete and it’s all some sort of big gift granted to everyone who took the effort to come here.

What a treat we have living here in beautiful Dana Point where we can come to the beach on Thanksgiving day and get in the water (I actually was not the only one) and enjoy all that nature has to give to us. And she has a lot to give today. It certainly provides much for the heart to be thankful for. I step onto the sand with so much gratitude.

I’m going through my usual mental water temperature dance where I ask myself “am I really doing this?” And I ask myself “exactly why am I doing this?” And then my self kindly suggests that I remember yesterday. I do this and then reply, “oh right. It was fantastic!”

Given that I am here an hour earlier than yesterday and the clouds are what they are, the light is different today and offers up a different kind of mood. It’s a good mood for sure. I look ahead to the horizon and the clouds are splattered like spilled milk across the blue sky. The water looks clearer and smoother then yesterday. The small waves curl like liquid crystal. I’m soon in up to my waist and I lean forward and start to swim north. The water is cool but not excruciating and after about a minute, I seem to pass through some kind of invisible barrier that separates the cold water from warmer water and I become surprisingly comfortable. It’s a pleasant surprise.

I swim and it seems like every time I raise my head to take a breathe, I am met with a surprise of just how beautiful and wonderful this all is. I pause before crossing the point into Salt Creek and I can see Catalina Island out on the horizon. Looking north I see a small crowd of surfers and above the cliffs I see the Ritz and a very very tall Christmas tree. One of these years I’d like to attend the Christmas tree lighting ceremony there.

I cross over into Salt Creek and the surfers are so close that I feel compelled to wave. There are pelicans dive bombing into the water which is always fun to watch. I’m just hoping one flies close to me. I’m wading with my camera at the ready. Come on you guys. Somebody come close.

Everything looks so crisp and clear today both above and below the water. Water visibility isn’t necessarily stellar but it is pretty good and certainly much better than yesterday. That far northern point just west of Monarch is looking so beautiful and the clouds arranged the way they are create the perfect frame.

I swim and swim all the way to the Monarch Bay Beach Club. I’m so happy that the water is so pleasant so late into November and I wonder if it will last into December. It certainly could. It could also turn bitterly cold. We just need a good storm from the North West and that will push us over into Winter.

I turn around to head back to where I started. I love swimming south along this stretch of beach and staring at the shore and the valley on the other side of Pacific Coast Highway. There are so many memories here and they are almost all good ones. There are vast swaths of my childhood I would not want to repeat but I might be ok if we could skip everything except the beachy parts. This right here is the home I like to remember and cherish.

I think of the affect of memory and how it lulls us into a different experience of something previously lived. I think of how we look back on moments and endow them with a charm that just seemed ordinary at the time. I wonder what it will be like after I have passed to the other side of this life into whatever it is that lies beyond and think back on this experience I am having right now. If we listen to the countless Near-Death experiencers who give us a glimpse into that world, we are told of an indescribable feeling of love and how there are colors that do not exist here and how this world here feels like a dream compared to “over there” where everything feels even more real. I wonder what kind of memories we store over yonder there. What is it like to exist in such a place and think back on experiences we have there? Maybe we don’t. If time is simply a construct of the world we live in here, maybe memory does not exist or maybe there is a different construct entirely that our earthly minds could not begin to comprehend - sort of like all of those colors that we cannot see.