You walk down the beach, cold and flat, wind whipping. The flat sand is dotted sparsely with walkers and dogs who chase and dance at the seagulls. The tide is low, running rivulets down the hard-packed sand speckled with mica, oil slicks, sand dollars burrowing, sandpipers running like ladies with their skirts drawn up to their knees.

About a mile down is where you get to the trees where the county park begins. There’s no line in the sand, but as soon as you cross into the park it’s summertime. The air is thick with sunscreen and barbecue coals. Kids flail on boogie boards, surfboards, skimboards, in wetsuits and swimsuits and gooseflesh in the sea.

The sea is blue under the blue sky and gray under the gray sky. The sky scuds in its stripes. A cloud bank sits like a pillow of smoke over seal rock where the sea lions bark and yawp undisturbed. The breakwater of the rock extends along the horizon far to the south.

The waves crash jade when they’re clear and foam-laced when the foam is high. I fall in love with the jade crash but I can never seem to get a photo of it. I see a jade wave and I go wow and take my phone out but then the next one is sandy and gray or foamy and white or it crashes too fast.

That thin wall of translucent green doesn’t want to be photographed. It’s only to see and to happen and to end.

Just as the waves aren’t water they’re just energy.