Perfecter
Another beautiful sunny morning in Dana Point. I leave at about 7:00 and there are a lot of cars in the parking lot for this time in the morning. When I reach the sand, there is a large circle of people engaged in calisthenics. I’m wondering if this is the same group of young athletes that I saw last Saturday morning.
There is light haze lingering on the beach and the shade from the bluff extends past the shore and onto the water just about where the larger waves are breaking. It’s beautiful. How fortunate I am and everyone else here on the beach to be in the presence of this beauty.
The water is the same timber of warm on my feet. The morning surf report said to expect “chillier” waters from Friday’s onshores. I don’t know, none of the buoys posted a temperature below 70 degrees. I get in the water and start swimming and I honestly feel no difference from the last several swims. All I can figure is that the auto-correct somehow corrected “perfecter” to “chillier.” Oh man. Computers! Am I right?!
I make my way south and the sun is just popping over the edge of the cliff. It’s all so exquisite. I poke my head up to check my trajectory and I see a bunch of white. I initially assume a breaking wave but that quickly changes into a flock of pelicans. I grab my camera as fast as I can but they are a good ways behind me by the time I take the shot. Still, I saw what I saw and it was good.
The surface of the water here is glassy smooth and this soft soft blue and the edges of the horizon shine a light pink. When I reach the south end of the beach, I am back in the shade of the headlands. The sun is now just behind the cluster of houses that sit on the very top of the bluff at the headlands trailhead. There are some decent waves breaking way offshore. They break and then wither to nothing as they reach deeper water and then break again when they get to the rocks just inshore of where I am wading here. I look north and I can see the tiny spec of lifeguard tower 0 below the Ritz which is the next destination of my journey.
So I swim north with that pink-blue horizon line in front of my eyes. The water is so perfect. Definitely perfecter than yesterday’s perfect. I feel like I could swim forever. I stop a few times along the way to the tower to take in my surroundings because they do demand to be taken in. I see kids (teenagers? young adults?) running along the beach who I assume are part of that circle I saw on the way down. I can hear the waves breaking inshore and it is such wonderful music. It’s the only thing that can be heard from here. Looking back south, I can see the rays of early sunlight breaking through the haze that rests just above the sand.
I’ve written about this in several posts and I feel like a crazy person doing it but I really feel like there is change coming on the horizon. On the one hand, anyone could say that and be correct. Change is always on the horizon. Life is constant change. But I feel like a significant milestone lies ahead. I feel like home sits on a hilltop somewhere up ahead and the number of valleys that lie between it and where I am now are becoming fewer and fewer.
What does that home feel like? It feels like 100% who I am. Well I’m sitting here out in the open ocean with no sound but the breaking waves in the distance and the chirping of the terns hovering around the fishing boats just offshore. This sure feels like home right here and right now.
