The One Apart From the 99

It’s Friday morning and it’s a beautiful day and wave/wind/tide conditions are perfect and the Capo Beach buoy reads 65 degrees. So needless to say I am amped for my swim today. This is all like a perfect storm - a storm of the very best kind. It’s the first day of Spring and I am ready to be sprung.

I head out at about 8:45ish. I just can’t keep track of time on a day like today. I see my first picture of the beach was taken at 9:08 but how long did it take to get to the parking lot? How long did it take to walk down those stairs? 25 minutes? A million years? Who could possibly know these things? Was I even awake or was it all some kind of a dream. So many of my dreams take place on the beach anyways. It’s just too hard to try and pick apart the dreams from the reality (if reality is what you want to call it).

I’m just going to try and recall here what it was that I saw, felt and heard in those moments that I was in the water. Was it real? It was what it was. Somehow I plotted a course from my apartment to the water and from what I remember I eventually found myself in the salty ocean air feeling the warm concrete under my feet and the blue sky over the horizon is meandering through my eyes and into my heart leaving a slightly narcotic trail behind.

I am thinking of the 65 degree water temperature in the buoy data. There is a part of me that anticipates the ocean will feel like a sauna. I catch myself thinking this and try to remind myself that 65 degrees is not THAT warm. I just want to make sure expectations are properly set. Another part of me responds and says that’s all well and good but last week the water got below 60 and I intend to enjoy my Jacuzzi. Good enough.

The water (and everything else) looks perfect. It’s this light electric blue and I am pretty sure I can already feel the sun reflecting off the surface from way up here on the bluff. I get to the beach and the tide is lower than it’s been the last few swims. It’s not that low and it’s rising. There will likely be very little beach left by the time I am done but that’s ok because the waves are small and besides, I am not here to walk on the beach. I am here for the water so the more the merrier.

I get to my spot and walk on out and I am enjoying the small waves that are breaking close to shore. The ocean surface is super smooth and it is early enough to see a faint orange glow lingering on the edge of the horizon. The ends of the beach are all misty and the light gets trapped in the moisture and it all makes my eyes want to explode with delight. There is so much joy on this beach. Everyone here looks content and happy. I’m sure we all have our problems and issues but they are not close to the water.

I start to swim north. The water feels cool but has very little to no bite. No it’s not a sauna but as I continue to move forward, it feels warmer. I pass between warmer and colder spots and the warmer spots seem more frequent and the colder spots really are not that cold. I let my mind face the coolness (I can’t even call it cold) with a reverent curiosity. I don’t want to miss anything. I can feel the water and temperature variations move over my skin and I feel held here and I don’t see anyone even close to nearby and I feel like I have the ocean to myself and I feel like that one sheep apart from the 99.

I pass the point below the Ritz and I just swim and I swim and I swim. I peer up every now and again to see that ridgeline that sits between Monarch and Three Arch. It’s a nice ridgeline as ridgelines go. Every once in a while I stop to just take in what’s around me. It’s all still and quiet and I hear the chirps of birds in the background but can’t see the birds. I’m past the surfers that populate the southern half of Salt Creek beach. I’m getting close to the northern bathrooms and the golf course. I can’t see much below the surface. It’s been pretty cloudy below for the past couple weeks. Then I see a big branch of kelp appear seemingly out of nowhere right in front of me. I reach for it and let my hand slide along the surface of its slippery leaves. I stop and look out on the water nearby and I can see the bulbs poking up through the surface. The sun shines on the golden transparent foliage that floats up top. It’s all pretty gosh darn beautiful. You should have come. You would have liked it.

I’m close to the Monarch Bay Beach Club, which is my destination. I continue to swim and occasionally look shoreside, which is not my breathing side, to gauge my progress. Once I am just about in front of the building, I stop for one last look before turning back around.

I see cormorants flying in the distant horizon. They fly low to the water and small wakes intermittently block my view of them and their wings flap so quickly like a strobe light turning on and off that gives them a real/unreal appearance. Then I look north towards Monarch and see a bird low to the water flying directly for me. I have my camera in hand and I’m super excited with anticipation. I’m going to get this shot and it could be great. You just never know but given my positioning and the fact that I am ready with the camera, the odds are good. The bird, a cormorant, is so fast and the camera shutter somewhat unpredictable. When should I click the button? Milliseconds matter.

I get the shot and can only hope for the best. I won’t really know until I get the images uploaded, how the shot came out. I pretty much take all these pictures fairly blind here. I aim and I click and then I get what I get. So I take a lot of pictures. I took 68 today but I will only keep a dozen or so. Statistics dictates that the more pictures I take the higher the odds of getting some good ones. I’m also out here several days a week. Some days it seems like all the shots are incredible and other days it feels much more meh.

I turn around and swim back in the direction of where I started. It definitely feels like the water is warmer on this second half of the swim. It’s hard to fathom how nice this all is. I stare at the golf course and then the lawn above Salt Creek and then the snack area and then the big buildings of the Ritz. I’m swimming closer to shore than I was on the way north. The surfers are close and I can hear their banter. They sound in good spirits and why shouldn’t they be?

Everything around me looks so magical and feels specially set apart from the realm of all other experiences one has in a day. Time seems to flow at a slower pace here. The water seems to be getting more clear but that’s probably because I am in shallower water.

I cross back into Strands Beach territory. Then suddenly it is Pelican Party Central. There are so many of them. I pause to take some pictures and don’t want to resume swimming because they keep appearing. Finally I get to just in front of my finishing spot and I swim into the surf and there are pelicans gliding over and under the crests of the waves. I’m on the back side of a breaking wave and a pelican flies over the curling lip and directly over me tilted upward and the sun catches its under belly and I can’t help but tell him how beautiful he is because he is and it would be a shame if no one said so.