Big Ball of Light
I left at about 8:30 for the beach and the conditions looked almost identical to yesterday: overcast skies, smooth ocean surface and small surf. I start to descend the stairs and my head is spinning with stress which I won’t talk more about. I really need to drag myself to the water. I’m not feeling into it today but I’m pretty sure that will change if I can actually get in. Having made it this far, it’s basically a done deal.
It’s a low tide and getting lower. As I noticed yesterday, there is more sand on the beach than there was when I swam last week and as I walk through the shallows, the dips and holes are not as deep and I don’t see any large rocks poking up through the sandy bottom.
After much unheated internal debate, I decide to swim north today mainly because I feel like something different from yesterday. Not that yesterday was at all bad. It was quite lovely but I’d like to change it up just a bit.
The water felt cold getting in but almost as soon as I begin swimming, I realize it’s not bad at all. I’m guessing it is 59. There are also some warmer pockets of water that feel quite nice. I’m noticing that although the sun has not penetrated the clouds, I can see a bright ball of light which I know is the sun and it looks like it may not be too long before the cloud that lies between it and me will burn away.
I’m swimming north through this lovely blue water. I watch isolated rocks and patches of kelp pass beneath me. The water is cool but warmer that the point where it makes my body do this transformer type thing which flips an internal furnace switch that lasts about 20 to 30 minutes. So it just feels kind of cold. Colder than what most would consider comfortable but warm enough where I just don’t worry about hypothermia - at least not for the hour or so that I will be here.
Just like yesterday, the cold soothes my mental stress. It pulls me into the here and now and dissipates my doom and gloom. Also that big ball of light is getting brighter and brighter. Soon I see blue sky and not much longer, I’d say just before reaching my northern turnaround point, it becomes the dominant feature in the sky and I can truly feel its goodness penetrate me. It casts hope all over the water.
After I turn around, I watch a hazy bluff top with silhouetted Palm trees and houses dotting the top of the cliff. The sun shines through the top of the water and lights up the sandy ocean floor. It is so so nice out here and I can see the receding cloud bank retreating out beyond the south end of Strands beach.
There are no surfers, or at least none that I notice, at the break near the point. I don’t know if it is the small waves or the fact that it is Monday. There is a diver boat just a little further west of me but not far. The conditions do seem favorable today with good visibility. The rest of the swim through the Dana Strand goes by quickly - almost too quickly. I pause before swimming to shore and take in this gorgeous view.
I finish up and head up the stairs to the shower and a somewhat beat up van is parked right in front of the shower. I begin to rinse off and a guy in camouflage style clothing gets in the van and starts asking me about the water. We have a pleasant chat but he is making some remarks about “nothing seems normal anymore” and how “common sense makes no sense.” Then he asks me how “Trump is working out for me” and I cringe at the direction this conversation is taking. But suddenly he notices my camera and he switches the topic and asks about that. Whew. Then he asks if I think there is going to be a war. I get the sense he is rererring to some kind of civil unrest kind of a war. I just say I really hope not (which is the truth) and then he tells me to have a great day and I wish him the same.
As per usual, I am so glad that I did this. Oddly that interaction with the guy in the van made me feel better about my own stressful situation. I have my own fears and concerns for sure but I don’t travel this world thinking we are on the brink of war and I choose not to look at society around me as if it is some battleground hosting an ever growing conflict between the forces of good and evil where each of us falls into a fictional caricature-like role of righteous or unrighteous person. That cannot be a pleasant way to view the world. Right now I’m looking out onto a sun covered ocean where nature does what it does and every day is filled with wonder.
