Families lounge on the coarse brown to gray sand. Children run along the shore. Clusters of people stand together and share experiences and adventures with one another. But they're all down at Salmon Creek Beach, a quarter to a half mile south of where I stand.

The few drivers who pull over to a stop at the miniscule turnout marked Miwok Beach arrive in search of convenient isolation. A twig's movement catches the eye and my boy runs to grab it. The tide draws nearer, and with it a million foamy bubbles at the front of Pacific crescents. Interaction with the undersea world is a footstep away. I step into the cold, the wet, the continually shifting sands and beside me stand the rocks that have seen a thousand years of such tides as what I linger in for but a moment.

The strands of giant kelp and bull kelp carried in from waters unfathomable to common tourists such as me wrap themselves around my ankles and make my steps heavy footed. I shake them free and in a few more dashes of the tide against the shore, they settle.

Most visitors opt for the tidepools. The waters are clear in  the shallows. The crystalline pools shimmer like a looking-glass, the green flora and fauna proudly on display.

The rippling waters that erode the sloped sand return to sea and are in a moment thrust right back up the strand in a fluster of glory ~ glistening like a fresh coat of paint. One to three feet of land mass is lost per year; most visibly apparent at Gleason Beach a few curves further north on Highway One from here.

The San Andreas Fault runs parallel to the shore along this Sonoma Coastline. I pay no attention to that for today. My eyes fix themselves on the silver-blue horizon as if to actually see a gray whale breach. Of course, I don't see one. But harbor seals and California sea lions are easier to spot in this more-isolated end of the coast-walk. Seagulls perch themselves atop the sand or rocks when not soaring overhead on the coastal thermals along with the carrion-seeking turkey vultures.

Hermit crabs and mussels make up the bulk of sea-borne critters that I've seen. Sand-borne critters tend to be of the human type; behind me a couple on the sand, over by the ancient boulders, for a moment of whispered love.

Farther north, on my right up by Coleman Beach where there is no sand at all; the rocky cliffs that dropped their weighty cargo a million years ago now dwarf a cluster of teenagers climbing among the crags, laughing and posing for their giggling friends, cameras in hand. Memories.

I return my eyes to the waves crashing against the rocks. Not too many centuries ago, I might have found myself an audience to a tribe of First People running into those waves naked and natural as the day they were born. Where did those days go? And where will the days I see this year go to a hundred years from now? Will the ocean finally have surrendered its last fish and become a desolate floating bed of trash?

 I have no time for that today. I pick up the trash at my feet; some party somebody had with someone else last night I suppose. I clean up their trash, and I hope that if you should choose to visit this beach you will take advantage of what freedoms you have today.

(text and photos copyright Stephen Martin 6Sep10)