2014
Newport Beach, CA
11 years ago, I slept on the beach.
I brought a book and I read it in the ocean. I don’t remember the name of the book. It doesn’t matter. I sat in the water and slowly sank into the sand as the waves washed in and out and back and forth.
I remember it being hot. So hot… but when I look it up, the high was only 87 that August, but the waves that washed over cooled me.
At some point, I dropped the book into the sand, and the waves washed it away. My feet were still buried in the wet, heavy sand, but I was stretched out on the sand with my eyes shut, dreaming as the waves washed over me and immediately pulled away.
The lullaby of the waves rocked me to sleep. It was soft and reliable. I knew when it was leaving and I knew when it was coming back—a clean aroma mingling with the faint scent of sun-warmed salt, anchoring me in the present moment. The warm sun on my face, the refreshing chill of the water sliding over my skin, and the wet, heavy sand pressing softly against my feet.
The ocean took care of me.
Each wave rolled in gently, like a hand smoothing out creases in a bedsheet, brushing over my skin and pulling away before I could fully wake. The coolness wasn’t jarring—it was tender, almost motherly. It lulled me deeper into sleep, quieting everything inside me. My body, half-submerged and softened by the sand, felt weightless. The heat of the sun on my back faded into the background, replaced by the steady hush of water meeting shore. I wasn’t thinking. I wasn’t dreaming. I was just there—held, cooled, cradled by something vast and indifferent, and somehow, that made me feel safe.
Sleeping on the beach made me feel like I belonged to the landscape, not as a visitor, but as something native, natural. The way the sand molded to my body, how the tide came close but never too close, it felt like the earth had made room for me. The wind skimmed across my skin without asking questions. The gulls overhead didn’t care who I was or what I did. And as I dozed off, the hush of the waves whispered as if I’d always been there—some lost piece of driftwood that had finally washed home. I wasn’t trying to be anywhere else. I wasn’t trying at all. For once, I wasn’t observing nature—I was part of it. Folded into it. Accepted without effort.