California dreaming

It was a chilly snowy morning today, just in time for Thanksgiving. Finn loved it, and would have hoovered up the entire yard if we’d let him. As it is, he now has a belly full of snow and is curled up next to a heating register downstairs.

Around the same time, I ran into the California Coastal Records Project, an effort to photograph the entire coastline of California. I had missed a Wired News article on the project earlier this month. The intent is to provide conservationists a baseline for demonstrating change, and a sort of rallying point for the coasts. Many of the photographs are strikingly beautiful.

For me, though, they also stirred a surprising amount of nostalgia. I know I’ve missed the ocean, but many of these coastlines and beaches are as familiar as the face of an old friend. I see where I used to boogie board as a little kid on Redondo Beach, the spot on Huntington Beach where my judo club would go for a beach party, or Big Corona where my acting group would go for training, or the stretch of Blacks Beach where I used to jog, the Balboa Peninsula where the parties were in college, the Beach House Restaurant in Laguna, the rock north of San Simeon I climbed (and nearly died) on, the little beach my family used to go to just below the Ritz-Carlton, and so many other parts of the coastline that have made up a part of my life. Perhaps on the top of that list is the tiny Pines Park on the right, where Jamie and I were married. I guess I really am a Californian at heart.