Place Essay

Those Beach Days

A body of water dances back and forth while it roars at me. The gentle breeze flows through my hair and gives it its own unique style. The grains of sand drizzle on me every time I take a step into it. That’s natures work at its finest. On a Friday afternoon, I sat at Venice beach staring into the beautiful ocean with one of my good friends. The water sparkled as if stars were beneath the water shining like they do in the sky. As I sticked my legs through the sand, a tiny lizard popped out of sand trying to escape and catch some sunlight. While it laid there sunbathing for a moment, I watched it carefully like if it was a celebrity and I was the security guard. My eyes were mesmerized by such a creature. After a while, I stood up, picked up my things carefully and moved back to sit with my friend, leaving the lizard unharmed.

            As the sun started making its journey down to the other side of the world, my mind became troubled as I remembered the problems that made my life momentarily difficult. The air started to get colder as I sat on the beach blanket with my friend. I thought to myself how relationships were so complicated. At the moment, I was going through a serious heartbreak, which caused me to go through a depression mode. Having nowhere to go I made up my mind to go to the beach with my friend. As my thoughts became more puzzled, I decided to go for a walk with my closest friend Kevin in the sand to get my mind off of things. We walked for miles leaving a good trail of footprints for people to follow us. As I told him my story, he carefully listened and gave me advice like a good friend does. The sun, becoming less visible by the minute, was giving its last glimpse of sunlight for the day, making the darkness approach faster and making the view harder to see. A mystical fog started to form amongst the ocean and I realized time was moving quicker than I expected. That’s when I did something not even I imagined I would of done. I ran into the water and decided it was the right time for a swim.

            The moment my skin came in contact with the freezing Antarctic water, it gave me the hugest goose bumps known to man. Even though the water was bone chilling, I didn’t mind because all I wanted was to get my mind off of things. The oceans roars became louder as the night approached but that didn’t stop me from riding the waves. Instead I accepted the challenge the ocean was bringing me. My friend carefully watched me at first but after feeling lonely for a couple of minutes, decided to join me for a swim. As we swam deeper into the water, something smooth swam by my foot. I jumped in fear and decided to head back to the shore thinking that the creature that swam by my foot was a shark craving my flesh. Sad that my swim came to an end, I sat on the shore where the huge collection of rocks laid. From that point on, I spent my time trying to find the perfect rock to keep. The wide variety of rocks made it hard to choose. There were red rocks, shiny rocks, smooth rocks, black rocks, brown rocks, and rocks shaped in the weirdest forms. Amongst the rocks were also shells that were beautiful with its splash of multiple colors.

            I wasn’t really interested in the shells because back home I had enough and my mission was to find a beautiful rock. I searched for a while until finally my eyes laid upon a rock that was laying far away from the other crowd of rocks. It was a smooth orange rock that was in shape of a heart. If you moved it around, it would shine brighter than any of the other rocks when the moonlight would hit on it. I stared at it with joy and decided to put in my wet pocket and continued my search. While I bent down to pick up a rock to skip into the ocean, a wave crashed down on me and I fell down on the rocks. The pain of falling and having rocks as my landing got me in a bad mood and as I got myself up, I picked up as much rocks as I could and threw them towards to ocean. My friend still swimming in the water saw what happened and starting laughing at me. Enraged my what had happened, I slowly walked back to the beach blanket.

            A little surprise was waiting for me while I was reaching towards my shoes. The same little lizard that I encountered before was resting inside my shoe. I knew it was the same one because of its brown circle spots pattern on its skin. I grabbed it and put on my palm of my hand and watched it move around. The little legs tickled me when it would walk around my hand. I gave a grin and placed the lizard back into the sand. My little friend digged back into the sand and disappeared right before my eyes. Once it was gone, I told my friend it was time to head back home. We packed up the things in silence, only listening to the gust of winds and the mighty roar of the ocean. Looking at the ocean one more time, I gave it a grin and started heading back to my car, where I decided not to look back; only continue walking forward while leaving a trail of footprints on the sand.