Should you ever find yourself in Croatia over the summer, and should the summer find you in popular cities like Split or Dubrovnik, and should the cities find you exhausted from the clamor of globe-trotting vacationers, you might like to know that two regions, dotted by picturesque coastal towns of unwieldy names, stretch between these cities and are known to locals as the Omiš Riviera and the Makarska Riviera.
The beaches in the Rivieras are narrow, sometimes rocky and sometimes pebbly but almost never sandy, and this particular geological composition is of great importance, the locals will say, because the rocks and the pebbles are good for the soles of the feet. Shade is abundant on these beaches thanks to the fragrant pines that form natural canopies, and you will notice that locals tend to retreat their beach towels in the pine shade when the sun is at its strongest, which, according to collective wisdom of the locals, is approximately between noon and 4 p.m.
Maybe you will also notice that everyone shows up at the beach. Babies. Kids. Teens. Couples, singles, parents, grandparents. And, should you spend an entire day on the beach, which you might notice is what all the locals do, maybe you will also observe that, in between the children’s laughter and the adult beach chatter, there is a moment when each beachgoer stops talking and detaches from the social fabric of these coastal towns. Some find a place of solitude to sunbathe, where the sea breeze brushes against the skin and brings a faint scent of distant lavender fields. Some curl up, rest their heads on the knees, and play with pebbles. Others watch the buoys rise and fall in the distance as waves come and go, lumbering in a procession: first they climb in deep navy, then peak in cobalt blue, then they roll over to the shore in teal, and then fizzle out in turquoise.
A little over 6,000 miles away from the Rivieras, in the state of California, in the city of Newport Beach, just off the Pacific Coast Highway, if you go down the stairs from the Reef Point parking lot, you will find yourself at a sandy beach in the Crystal Cove State Park, at a particular section of the beach that is between the Scotchman’s Cove and the 3.5 Cove, to be precise. The wide beach stretches into the distance on both sides, the distance gets outlined by rugged tall cliffs that grow flowers and weeds, and the flowers and weeds retreat their scents in the presence of oceanic accords of saltwater, kelp, dirt, and seagulls.
At Crystal Cove, the waves of the Pacific Ocean do not lumber. They surge in the distance. They crash against the rocky concretions in the Monterey formation. They hug the shore, pull the washed up shells and weeds into their embrace, and then retire, slowly, back into the distance. Here, at any time of the year, you will see the locals walk barefoot along the shoreline, leaving footprints in the elastic wet sand that disappear as soon as they are formed. Most of the time, people walk alone, sometimes in couples but rarely in groups. Some say hi when you cross paths, others nod and smile. Some do neither because they are looking at the ocean, others because they are looking down. Almost everybody laughs at the sanderlings who first chase the traces of waves and then run away from them, and then chase again, and then run away again.
About 430 miles north of the Crystal Cove State Park, should you find yourself in the city of San Francisco, you can take the N Judah light rail train, one of the city’s public transport options, to get to Ocean Beach. You can board the train in the financial district area, say at the Montgomery Station, where corporate offices reign and construction machinery clatters and police sirens wail, and fifty minutes later, disembark the train at Judah St and La Playa Station, where the Golden Gate Park’s Murphy Windmill and Monterey cypresses proudly face the Pacific Ocean and where the lilac, livid, pale ocher and pale peach houses of the Sunset neighborhood lie low and listen to the ocean waves murmur across the street.
It’s almost always cold at Ocean Beach, even when the sun blazes and the sand burns, but people of San Francisco still show up and walk barefoot along the shoreline. If you do the same, which you should, you might see resigned bull kelps and cracked shells and bleached sand dollar tests and desaturated crab carapaces, and you might wonder what all goes on in those deep waters. Cargo ships, at first, loom on the horizon like ghosts and, before you know it, become real and look bigger than the ocean itself. The sights at Ocean Beach are striking—they command and impress, which is maybe why people of San Francisco come prepared, with beach tents and jackets and wet suits and snacks, and maybe why everyone in San Francisco has an opinion on the right month and the right day and the right hour to go to Ocean Beach.
It’s on N Judah that I found myself this summer, in the week I was off from work, going to Ocean Beach in the late morning and coming back to my apartment in the late afternoon. That I found myself on the train, on my way to the beach, is the right way to frame this experience because the first time I went, I didn’t know why I was going but I knew I simply had to go. One day, I went into the icy, salty ocean water multiple times. Another day, I watched and listened to the ocean waves. And another day, I walked barefoot along the shoreline and counted cracked shells. And then another day, I saw the ocean glisten below the majestic Western sun and I felt a weight dissolve off my chest.
Perhaps I should have known why I was at Ocean Beach, because three years ago, when I was at a crossroads and when I spent a lot of time with my extended family in Newport Beach, it was the Crystal Cove State Park and the Reef Point beach where I found myself every day, and because, for the first twenty years of my life, it was the beaches of the Croatian Rivieras where I found myself befriending the sea and learning that the sea never asked, never judged, never distrusted. Perhaps I should have known that I was at Ocean Beach because the colossal indigo blue depths are what I turn to when I have questions, when I have to relearn that not all of my questions have answers, that not all of my worries need to be worries at all.
I have been thinking, ever since that week, that I never noticed how I had structured my life to always have the seas and the oceans near me, even when I am far away from them. Like how my furniture is all deep blue, orange, and yellow: the colors of the ocean in the last seconds of the sunset. Or how my pillows and sheets and bedroom walls are all in shades of beige: the colors of sand. Or how so many of my shirts and sweaters and jackets and shoes are in shades of blue, and how I never name blue as my favorite outfit color when it inarguably is.
Why not lakes, why not rivers, I have also been thinking. Why did they never feel the same way? Maybe because they were always too still or always too rushed. And what about mountains and the crisp mountain air and the scenic mountain sights people talk about? They never did anything for me either, maybe because the mountains demand to be fought for, because they offer gifts to only those who conquer their heights.
What I have been really thinking about the most, ever since that week, is how I had always felt an immediate connection with people whose childhoods orbited around the seas and the oceans. It’s a bond that is implicit and unspoken, a bond that exists through a shared need to sit by the water, to watch the waves that demand to be seen, and to speak only when necessary. In the presence of something that’s always there with a power so grand to swallow us completely, to do nothing but exist. In the presence of those colossal indigo blue depths, to surrender.