“To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.”
~ Isaac Newton
~~~
Here are some of my older images from the Guadalupe Dunes and Perfix Beach. All taken with my old Pentax film camera and Kodachrome slide film. Mostly from the late '80s but I have been Guad Dunes to Point Sal fan for years and some are from the late '70s as well.
Interesting that just south of Point Sal lies Vandenberg AFB. A US military missile facility that I have come to know... fairly well... we have a personal relationship that goes back a ways.
Mostly tho' it was Pt Sal State Park that got me going to that part of the coast. And then it was going to the Guadalupe Dunes (north of Pt Sal), at the west end of Hwy 166 (which is also Main Street through Santa Maria)... that hooked me and kept me exploring its many, many moods.
All seasons look different at the Dunes. My favorite time of year was around Thanksgiving and Christmas -- when the rain would come and then be followed by sunny days -- because the rain would compact the sand and it made it easy hiking. But it didn't really matter because the place was always beautiful and the best thing to happen there was the banning of ORVs. That act changed that whole section of coast because the only access was by walking. But on some days even the ORVers' trash took on the specter of art...
Admittedly it could be the sand itself... the line of dune edge after a windstorm reshapes it...
or the play of light from the low sun on the dunes. A time of day that few saw (or see) because the Dune road was locked at sunset (and still is if my memory is correct). And it was that light, the last 1/2 hour of the day, when the sky was cloud free and the air crystal clear, that would bring me to ground - sacred ground.
This place is a place I have dreamed, in deep detail, never anything but beautiful... once even flying over whale and dolphin and foaming waves sitting astride a pelican... it was never boring spending time there. And I was in shape and able to get up and down the dunes w/ ease... there was always something new or surprising... or just beautiful. Beautiful is a word that fits the place...
... no matter which way one turns, its there again. And this... place, is one of those places where I could not walk without feeling a kinship with the indigenous families who once spent a fair share of their year living -- generation upon generation -- and sharing these same vistas...
and that sand, always new patterns...
But the end point was always... the beach... that wonderful stretch of ocean meeting the land, here...
where I could fish, alone...
or not quite alone...
or maybe spend a day just sitting on the porch...
With eternal gratitude to those who cared for this place... who care for it still...
~~~
“You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
~ Jon Kabat-Zinn
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