Another perfect Fall day here in Dana Point where the beach demands my attendance. I leave at 10:00 and there is not a cloud in the sky. Also, it’s 67 degrees outside. 67!

As I drive down Palisades Drive, the sun is shining on a smooth smooth Capo Beach ocean surface and there are electric white glowing sparkles on the water. These sparkles, I’m pretty sure, are sentient and trying to communicate via the encoded rhythms of their pulsating glimmer.

At the parking lot I grab my second favorite parking space and head for the stairs. On the way down, someone on the way up says to me, “great visibility today.” I look back and it is Sam who I met a month or so ago and who also enjoys a wetsuitless ocean swim. We chat for a bit and then I resume my descent to the shore.

It is just minutes past a 5.9 high tide. There is plenty of sand to walk on but not much surf. The surf report mentioned shoulder high+ waves but I’m not seeing them. The south end of the beach seems to be glowing in the sun’s light and is perhaps at risk of being incinerated as if any second now that glow will explode into flames.

I set my stuff down and experience a near vertigo moment as I contemplate how I am about to get in the water. It just seems so incomprehensible, but I have to do this. I need that water.

I step in and, like Monday, the shallows are so very clear. The small wakes in front of me silently rise and crumble into my body. I’m in up to my stomach and I launch into a swim. I exhale as the cold takes command over every cell inside of me. I submit myself as a slave to the will of the ocean. I pray that it takes me and transforms me and cleanses my thoughts.

There is a feeling inside of me that has no language to describe itself. I swim deeper into this and melt into color and a racing collage of images splashing in the water around me. Somehow I know this to be the essence of who I am. It’s as if I left it in this ocean as a child and forgot about it and here it is waiting for me all this time.

I struggle to find my way in this life and over think every turn and labor over every fork in the road. The cold ocean tells me just to keep swimming…keep moving. It’s all much simpler than I think. I get distracted by the destination, but I just need to pay attention and work with the currents.

It’s cold in the water but I think that 67 (and probably warmer by now) degree air is working some magic over various patches just on the uppermost surface. The cold surges and then retreats. I feel like the cold has something to tell me so I swim directly into it. Did I hear it right? I think maybe I did. It’s like a forgotten dream. I cant repeat what I heard but it doesn’t matter. My body has absorbed the interaction.

The sky is so blue and the horizon bounces in the fog of my goggles. I occasionally see the point in front of me. The southern Dana Point is dark and sits like a mass of black shadow on the water while Monarch point to the north glows sandy brown in the sun. From my perspective I see the lifeguard tower and the Monarch beach club floating on the water in the distance.

It’s silent here and I cant hear anything but my breath and splashing about. Then at the north end of the swim, I hear voices. It must be coming from the small pack of surfers in front of the lifeguard tower. They look so far away.

I finish the swim and there is less shade along the stairway than there was an hour ago, and I enjoy the light of the sun.