Griffin Island, Wellfleet, Cape Cod National Seashore.  

I had made it to the crest of the dune after a climb in two-steps-forward-one-step-back sand, when whoosh! I was almost blown off my feet. I must have shimmied, but after a few steps down toward the waves, I steadied myself and caught my breath. Wow! I’ve got to get to the water’s edge, or at least partway over that swath of rocks. I wanted to somehow inhale all the vitality and be recharged by the “Great Place!” feeling of it all. 

Now I turned a full 360 degrees. The place was registering on me head to toe, starting with the sand stinging my bare legs all the way up to whipping around my hair.  Ahead, whitecapped waves kept surging forward, then pulling back. Splash! . . . hisssss.  Splash! . . . hisssss.  

Via skin, sense, and heart, the beach was giving me a whole-body treatment which served up vast energy, as though saying, “Go, Sally! Here is creativity and purposel! Take it and use as much as you possibly can!”    

Another day a few weeks later. I stood on yet another grand beach, again facing waves rolling in, tumbling and rushing and breaking on the shore. Again wind coursed around me, again I stood transfixed and energized. This time, though, I was wearing jeans, so no sand stung my calves, but still my hair flung itself into twists and pennants and strands, and my cheeks were reddened with joy and sun. As at Griffin Island, I smiled, cried out unheard, and let myself receive what my husband calls “the allness” of it.  

 I was standing on the Pacific shore in Del Mar, California, just a few miles from where I live in San Diego. 

 Whichever coast I stand on, I choose among several different beaches; of course I don’t expect spectacular waves every time.  Like a multitude of people, the ocean shows itself in all sorts of moods and tides, in quiet moments and in traces it throws or washes up on shore. I also love to explore marshes and estuaries, and to walk trails that follow the contours of the shore.   

A vast aqueous world of life of all kinds, the ocean nourishes me, as do all its denizens. So perhaps it is not surprising that some of my photographs offer a kind of “tree of life” metaphor.  

A tree of creative life, that is. For all my life, I have been drawn to the restlessness of the sea, drawn to wave motion that sculpts, outlines, dashes against, stirs up and agitates—and keeps making things new. Again. Again. The ocean’s extravagance offers up tendrils and patterns that flower, fade, then disappear. Endless life!  

And thrilled and inspired though I was at Griffin Island that gusty September morning, I know that Cape Cod holds no monopoly as a source of magnificence and creativity. Whether on the outer beach of Nauset, or Sandy Neck, or from La Jolla Shores or Del Mar Beach. And San Elijio Lagoon and Torrey Pines, where I walk along the edge of the tidal marsh very much as I do at Fort Hill, that place I love so in Eastham on Cape Cod. 

Privileged to be bi-coastal, I live in the presence of “the great waters” and feel sometimes as though the waves dash with the express purpose of reminding me of that creative energy within me, Make use of life, Sally! It’s out there for the noticing, taking, and breathing in. Whichever coast you stand on.