I left my house at about 7:15. It is another beautiful sunny morning. We are in the middle of a “heat wave” here, which means it has been getting into the upper 80s, which is pretty delightful especially if you throw in an ocean breeze. It is 72 as I step out my front door, aka perfect. I think of some of my co-workers and their heat waves in other parts of the country and suddenly I’m not sure if I can call this a heat wave with a clean conscience.

I had an idea just before I left to go to the San Clemente pier for my swim today. It will be nice to do something different and I should be finished before 10:00 which is when you have to start paying for parking. The San Clemente pier is not entirely new for me, but I have swam there less than 10 times as opposed to nearly 1000 times or more at the strand.

It takes just 11 minutes to get there. Close to what it takes to get to the strand, but I am a lot closer to the water. I double check the parking hours at the pay station and they start charging at 9:00. That should be fine. I have an hour and a half.

It is totally beautiful out. There are some small scattered clouds in the sky just under the newly rising sun. The pier looks lovely and there is pure blue sky for as far as you can see out to the horizon.

I walk down the beach to lifeguard headquarters which is just past the swim/surf boundary. They can be sticklers about that here. There are small/medium sized waves breaking. A ssw swell is winding down today. There is another break I can see way far out - much further than I will be swimming. I wonder how big those waves are. Looks like they could be 3 feet or 15 feet. Just can’t say from here.

My plan is to swim to north beach and back. That is probably about 2 miles round trip. The water feels nice. According to this week's water temperature report, these next few days are supposed to bring the warmest water of the year. Thank you heat wave!

I walk out to the surf and dive in. This is super nice. The bluff between this beach and north beach is dark in the early morning shade. There is a train track that sits along side it but I can’t see it in the darkness. Looking south towards the pier and Cottons Point, the air is all misty and hazy and magical. The water is super smooth. The new sun reflects on the water like a mirror reflecting blue sky on blue water. And these small scattered evenly spaced clouds amplify the sun’s light.

I look ahead towards my destination. I see some small white somethings way up ahead. At first I think they are breaking waves and then I realize they are the ocean front homes just north of North Beach. I see those and then the harbor and the large Dana Point Headlands jutting out far west of where I am now. I’m trying to maintain a course fairly close to the bluff here and I manage to keep to it pretty well.

As I breath each breath, I see that blue sky and effervescent shiny blue water. It all looks so new as if this ocean was just formed today and the nearby land mass is just settling into place after an extra long millennial night. The water here is not clear. Every now and then I get a hazy glimpse of the ocean floor and it looks nearly featureless. It feels barren out here. So little kelp and no fish and very few rocky shadows lying below me. Be all this as it may and it’s hard to suggest any kind of corrective measures. Cloudy water? Barren of life? I don’t know…whatever it is it’s perfect right now. I feel an energy in this water and light that feeds me.

When I look towards shore it is just a long silhouette of cliff face topped with condominiums. Eventually I see a beach start to take shape. It’s the new sand of North Beach. Yesterday I ran here from home for the first time in a couple months and I was shocked by the difference from the last time I had been here. Last time the beach was covered in mostly cobble rocks and not much sand at all. San Clemente and Capo Beach are now in the midst of a major sand replenishment project and you can really see a difference on the beach. It looks good. Smooth sand from the bathrooms and train station all the way to where the water meets the shore. The color is a golden brown which is different from the more greyish tone it had before.

I keep swimming and I’m getting close to the North Beach bathrooms and those houses just past the beach start to fill in. They sit on mobile home plots but many of the homes are no longer mobile homes. They are not going anywhere any time soon. I wonder just how much further I want to go. It doesn’t feel like I have been out that long but I know I have likely been out for about 40 minutes. Maybe I’ll just swim past North Beach to right where those homes begin. Part of me wishes I could just keep on swimming into Dana Point. It is so lovely out and the water is delicious.

Well I guess it is time to turn around. I have not swam too far out to shore but I would like to get a little closer just to get a better look at this stretch of coast that I don’t see too often. There are decent waves breaking all along this bluff but it’s not too big and I make my way to just about 50 feet past the surf.

There are a few surfers scattered all along this coast that have the waves mostly to themselves. This is not the most popular surf spot but today looks like a good day to be here. I swim by and can see the surfers eyeing the oncoming sets. I look to my right and can see the peaks build. They look like they could break right on me but by the time they get to where I am they hardly look like anything, but I can feel my body lifted up and the entire pier and beach ahead comes into view and then I fall back down as the wake passes and the pier and beach go away for a few seconds until the next wave in the set.

I hear what sounds like a train and there is an Amtrack heading south. I quickly reach for my camera and race to take a shot before it is gone. This reminds me of photographing a bird in flight but it is a little easier. It moves a little more slowly and its trajectory is fixed to the contours of the track.

I stop every few minutes to take what feels like the exact same set of pictures I took before. I am sure there are slight variations in light and perspective and I mainly take so many because I know a bunch will have water drop smears or weird colors and you just never know when something totally unpredictable might come into view that you would not want to miss - like a bird or dolphin or wave or that perfect bubble sitting on the surface. The clouds are constantly moving and the luminosity of the sun is ever changing and these interact with one another to create moments of wonder that must be recorded.

I keep swimming and soon the bluff gives way to a canyon lined with condominiums. This section of the San Clemente coast is zoned differently from Dana Point and Laguna. Dana Point is almost all multi million dollar beach front properties and Laguna is a mix of multi million dollar estates and nice hotels. San Clemente here is predominately condominiums and apartments and some don’t look all that pretentious and might be inhabited by more people of normal means.

Another train comes by. I can hear it before I see it. I love this about this spot. This is definitely a unique characteristic of this swim. There may not be much in the way of marine life here, but the trains are truly fun. This one is a MetroLink and it is moving north. Again, I quickly grab my camera and try to capture this metallic creature before it fades into the distance.

The pier is getting closer and larger. It feels like not much else has changed here in the hour that I have been in the water. This is mostly a good thing because things were pretty spectacular to begin with. I see the water in front of me between myself and the pier like a giant lake sized mirror reflecting the light, clouds and sky above and forms an eternalness of light and color that collapses into this single moment and place. I want to wade here all day and breathe it all in.

I continue south and and soon the bluff fades into a beach with lots of new golden sand (like North Beach). The sun lights it up and there are more surfers and body boarders towards the shallows. It’s early so there are still relatively few in the water but that is going to change drastically as the day progresses.

There is lifeguard HQ and I steer left and towards shore. I can feel my fingers brush the sandy bottom sooner than I anticipate. That’s another thing about this beach. The shallows can extend for quite a ways out and it feels like it takes a good while to hit even waist level depth.

I’m now walking on the shore and the pier looms large before me and dominates the foreground. A group of birds, gulls I think, are flying in circles between the shore and the shallows. I stop at the showers at the base of the pier. These showers are not too bad I have to say. I’m still giving the upper Strands shower my highest rating but these are good and more modern than those at the Strand. I’m the only one using them right now. Boy is that going to change latter today. Everything here as I see it now will be transformed over the later morning and afternoon into a bustling mass of people seeking solace from the heat.

I arrive at my car at about 9:10. I have just overshot the cutoff for paid parking but there is no ticket on my windshield so I’m good. What a wonderful swim and experience that was and I’m so glad I came here.

I return with my wife, youngest son, and another young family later in the day. The beach is jam-packed. The sand is burning. The showers are overrun by parents washing sand off children and toys. The shallows are filled with people all looking like they are engaged in some sort of worship ceremony that involves fully embodied engagement with the water. In some ways one could look at this later scene and poo poo the crowds and over abundance of stimulation and part of me wants to sink in to my happy place - the one I was at during this swim. However, it’s still great.

How lucky are we to live where we can drive 10 minutes to escape the heat and be in the water? Also, I can assure you that the kids playing in this water and sand are in their happy place right now this very moment. I watch them and even now I remember the smile on my own son’s face as he rolls in the wet sand and has absolutely no care for how he is going to get that sand off later.