Beach Reads

This post has absolutely nothing to do with reading. Except maybe it does, a little.

My favorite thing to do at the beach is read. Okay, actually my favorite thing to do at the beach is probably eat either a plain bagel with cream cheese or a bacon, egg, and cheese on everything with hot sauce. But reading is a very close second.

I went to the beach I now consider my local beach—Jacob Riis—for the first time this season the other day. (By “the season,” I mean the months during which I actually have to pay to park at the beach. I take walks there year-round, barring rain or snow, because the ocean is beautiful and calming in every season, in my humble opinion.) I had made myself an English muffin with cream cheese and iced coffee, and I sat a little away from other people, and not close enough to the water to have to worry about tides, because I had no idea if it was high or low or if it might come up in the short time I would be there before work.

Looking at the tanker ships far out in the Atlantic, and shivering a little in the cool sea breeze, and absolutely forgetting to reapply sunscreen so that I came home to strange, awful red streaks of sunburn, I thought about the beaches I’ve called mine. My mom loves the beach, and now I do, too. But I went through a phase as a kid when I absolutely hated it. I once got tumbled by a strong wave, and the experience of being unable to find up, or to find air, scarred me for quite a few years. Then, I think I hated the beach just to be a contrarian adolescent. I spent the summer before ninth grade teaching swim lessons in the morning and then mostly keeping myself locked up in the air-conditioned house for the rest of the day. I hated the sun, I hated the heat, I hated the sand, I hated the betrayal of the waves and the pull of the rip current.

I’m really, really glad I outgrew that.

I find such comfort in the beach and the ocean, and it’s an especially amazing place in the summertime. I love going in the mornings before work, or on crowded weekends, or even driving out after work on a summer Friday or late on a Saturday afternoon. I can sit with a book and a beverage (iced coffee in the mornings, probably a beer later on, and never enough water) for hours. On the first visit this year, I almost didn’t leave in time to make the drive home to be on time for work. (And part of me——most of me——didn’t care.)

I’ve been to a lot of beaches, in New York and Rhode Island and Massachusetts and New Jersey and North Carolina. I love a boardwalk, but I also love a flat parking lot leading to flat sand leading to thunderous water.

When I was on the West Coast around Memorial Day, I went to Stinson Beach in California for the first time. I thought of Stinson while at Riis, the way I also flashed on Riis and all the Long Island town beaches I grew up on while at Stinson. I did a road trip with friends down the California coast last year, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and I’ve been to Santa Monica a few times now. 

And California beaches fascinate me. Nine times out of ten, you’re on a strip of sand looking out at the Pacific with trees and shrubs and probably a cliff behind you. You get such beauty and so much nature. It felt like cheating when, at Stinson and, the day before, at Baker Beach in San Francisco, I thought about how much prettier the beaches were on the West Coast. Look at the flowers. Look at the hills. Look at the salt spray and fog; look at the outcroppings of rocks and the steep cliffs you drove or climbed down to get there.

At Jacob Riis the other day, I put down my book for a moment and thought again about this. I do love the landscape of a West Coast beach. But I also like the flatness of an East Coach beach, like the beaches I grew up with.  I’ve also certainly visited East Coast beaches with forests at their fringes. But those beaches feel enormous and full. Once it’s warm enough, people are in the water, drinking, eating, blasting music. A lot of the California beaches I’ve visited have been farther north, meaning it’s usually too cold to do a “real” beach day.

I thought I had to pick a favorite, and I think part of me expected to have an answer by the time I finished typing up these vague ideas. But I think it comes down to the fact that one place feels like home, thus familiar and comfortable, and the other is foreign, thus exciting and new. Both have their merits.

And at least I can read on a beach, no matter where it is.