Bonanza of Beauty

Again, conditions are nearly perfect this morning. A little sunshine would be nice, but I really cannot complain. The wind and surf are fairly calm and water temperature is in the comfortable zone. One of the Camp Pendleton buoys is now reporting 65. This week’s water temperature forecast said to be prepared to bring along some extra neoprene but I just don’t know what I’d do with it.

I leave a little after a quarter after 9:00 and I am just a little chilly walking down the stairs to the beach with no direct sunlight shining on my skin. However I have this suspicion that I will actually be warmer in the water than I am out here in the light breeze right now.

Soon I’m in the water and my suspicion is confirmed. It is very comfortable out here. The water is a pleasant light blue and one moment it is a sort of cloudy effervescence and the next it is a clear blue void. These varying shades of blue, grey and white are so soothing to stare into. It’s like a mirror into my own mind. Somehow I see a reflection of the essence of my being and I am happily lost, not knowing if I am looking out or within. It all seems the same.

I can feel the water surrounding my skin. It’s not particularly warm or cool. It’s close to perfect. I try to relax my focus onto the sensations of the water. There are a lot of sensations the water is sending me: tactile, visual, olfactory, and acoustic. There is a joy that quietly resides in all of this. I try to approach that joy with curiosity, which isn’t difficult because I am genuinely curious. I feel like the joy wants to take me somewhere. I don’t know where but I really really want to go. I think there is something about myself that it wants to uncover and I can’t wait to see what I find.

Half way back up the beach about two thirds into the swim, I see this fish a few feet beneath me. I just make out a sort of outline of it’s body. It’s is a notably large fish. Not huge like a dolphin or shark but hefty. Maybe a couple feet long and I wonder what it is. I have not seen much fish lately but that is soon going to change as we get closer to summer. So I welcome the sight of this fish as a precursor of many more fish to come in the upcoming weeks. I swim a little further and I see it again. I grab my camera and point it in the direction of the outline I see and I think that I may be able to make out more detail in the photograph. This turns out to be correct.

As I make my final swim to shore, I aim myself diagonally towards the asphalt today. The tide was low when I entered the water and I noticed how much sand there is and that there don’t appear to be any threatening rocks near the concrete ramp so I might as well get in as much swimming as I can here until the very end.

Soon I am touching the bottom and I stand up. Then I look north and someone is entering the water. He has a wetsuit and some kind of a pole. It’s not a spear. I have no idea what he or she is doing. There is an ATV and a small group on the shore that I think may have accompanied him. Then I notice dolphins just a little further out. They are parallel to the surf and as one wave is about to break, I can see the full body of the dolphin just through the face of the wave. It’s super cool and beautiful. Magnificent seems like the right word here.

Then I look even farther out and there is a large flock of pelicans hovering just above the surface of the water. Sometimes you just never know what is happening here in the water even in your very midst. As I’m focusing on swimming towards that asphalt road, a bonanza of beauty is exploding behind me.

I still have no idea what the person with the pole was doing.