West-ender Malibuites exchanged sweats, Ugg boots, and hoodies for shorts, bikinis and sun hats Saturday as the thermometer climbed towards the 80-degree marker. Finally, a break. More than a break: the best of a summer’s day!
It seems like So Cal has been trapped in an arctic chill since Thanksgiving with consistent daytime temperatures hovering around 50-something degrees and nights touching the 30’s, paired with a wind chill blowing off the ocean, slapping at our backs. Sniffles, sore throats and the flu make for uncooperative socializing, let alone lots of missed school days. But Saturday, January 19, the vibe at Little Dume was “chill” and one of relief. You could almost hear a big sigh, like an exhale of a pranayama yoga breath.
At eleven in the morning, with barely a breeze nor swell, barebacked boarders glided across the glassy bay. Solo, or in pods, they rhythmically dipped and pulled, dipped and pulled—alternating from arm to arm, maintaining a straight line, heading east or west.
The tide line eases from a 6.5 to a -1.6, more than enough to expose the shoreline’s underwater cacophony of vivid organic colors: the potent green of kelp and algae; the breathing purples and orange backs of the starfish; the chocolate and umber spikes of the urchin. This winter’s receding tide cycle is providing a major moonscape of sediment that angles and juts out of wet and dry sand. Off leash (don’t snitch!) local dogs and residents take their time meandering through the sculptural forms, pausing now and then for—well, just to pause. And maybe take a photo for the spectacularity of it all.
We had the honor to photograph a woman with her daughter and an exchange student from Italy. “Bon giorno!” I exclaimed, meaning it and feeling a little silly, and not. After all, everyone knows the greeting, but how often do you get to say it on a Malibu beach? Moreover, how often does a young person from a foreign country much, much older than ours, with some of the greatest pieces of art and treasures the world has ever known, get to experience a place called “Malibu”? I bet she felt she “landed” her own kind of treasure today: different from Rome, or the Amalfi Coast, or Tuscany. But special.
My Malibu exists beyond mere celebrity groove and tops out at one of the “grooviest” environments (micro climates and all), on this planet. What a place to come home to! This exchange student and her new family seemed to feel this way too, as they smiled from ear to ear for their photo op on a warm beach in January!
Such a gift for this person, and anyone for that matter, who is lucky enough to dip their toes in the Pacific, alongside the indigenous water fowl, the ashes of seaweed, and the astoundingly beautiful asterias vulgaris—celestials of the sea.