Beachcombing at Miramar Read online

It’s dark when I arrive at my beach house. I drag a mattress out on the deck and lie on my back, watching the moon. I have been watching it carefully ever since I arrived at Miramar, trying to solve its mystery. We have dispatched astronauts to its surface, and for a while that seemed like such an enormous feat. But now that the wonder of the moon landing has worn off, it seems more like a circus stunt, like so many clowns tumbling out of a tiny car, and the moon itself remains as elusive as before.

  Tonight, the moon is as full and bright and yellow as I have ever seen it. It appears to be climbing up the eastern sky; right now it’s suspended over the crest of the coastal range. It looks to me as if the moon is following the path of the sun, traveling from east to west, but I know that is self-deception, too. Earth and moon are both eastbound—except the earth and I are moving faster, so it seems as if the moon is going the other way.

  It’s late when I fall asleep. I’m awakened early by the shattering sounds and noxious fumes of Jet Skis. I stand on my deck, surveying the ocean, watching the noisy machines bounce over the breakers like seagoing snowmobiles. They gather below my beach house, where they multiply: two, then four, then eight, then twelve. The riders stand straight up in the cockpit and drive directly into the swells; they vault over the crests and reverse direction in midair.

  One of the riders is thrown from his perch like a cowboy from a bucking bronco. He does a double flip before crashing headfirst into the sea. I assume he has broken his neck—but no, I see him swimming through the surf in pursuit of his runaway machine, which is going in circles. He catches up, clambers back aboard, revs up the engine, and plows into an oncoming wave.

  I wonder about these riders of the surf and the lengths to which they go to breathe excitement into their lives. They are overcome with a sense of power because they have planted a combustion engine between their legs that enables them to leapfrog over the waves. I would like to hail them ashore and tell them what I have so recently learned.

  I would tell them that if they want thrills, they should throw away their toys and ride the greatest roller coaster of all, the earth on which they dwell. And I would tell them that it will cost absolutely nothing because they gained admission free of charge on the day they were born.

  nine

  the raven and the radar

  A thing of beauty is a joy forever:

  Its loveliness increases; it will never

  Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

  A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

  Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

  —JOHN KEATS

  I wake early, filled with resolve. I skip breakfast and take to the beach, determined to investigate the mystery that has bothered me since I arrived at Miramar. I see it now, as I see it every morning from my deck—a spherical antenna that rises like a giant mushroom from the headland about a mile away. I have decided to get as close to it as I can and find out for myself exactly what it is doing there.

  I have asked many people what it is, but they shrugged their shoulders or stared at me blankly and said they didn’t know. Their indifference surprised me, for the antenna is the dominant landmark along this stretch of coast, towering over the bluff on which it stands.

  I pass through the harbor and follow a dirt path that comes to an abrupt end at a paved road. I step over a guardrail and start up a steep incline. Almost at once I confront blazing red capital letters on a sign:

  WARNING

  U.S. Air Force Installation

  It is unlawful to enter this area without permission of the Installation Commander.

  Sec. 21, Internal Security At of 1950.

  While on this installation, all personnel and the property under their control are subject to search.

  I continue on up the hill until I reach a chainlink fence with barbed wire across the top, encircling the installation, blocking access from sea or land. Beyond the fence, I can plainly see the enormous dish, two smaller antennae, and several low buildings. Suddenly a door to one building opens and a heavyset woman in a khaki uniform strides toward me.

  “Can I help you?” she asks firmly from her side of the fence.

  “I’m just curious,” I say. “What is this place, anyhow?”

  “This is a radar station. We track missiles fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base.”

  “Vandenberg Air Force Base! That’s four hundred miles away!”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Where do the missiles land?”

  “Way out in the Pacific. Near an atoll. And now I must warn you that you’re trespassing on Air Force property.”

  I would like to ask more questions, but her manner makes it clear that our conversation has come to an end.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know.”

  As I turn to leave, I see two surfers about fifty yards off to my right, skirting the installation. They are hiking up the headland in their wet suits, their boards under their arms. I follow them along a well-worn trail until they disappear over the edge of the embankment. When I arrive at that point, I stand for a moment, taking in the sweep of the rocky coast. Below me, at the base of a steep path, is a pocket beach, by far the most beautiful of any I have come upon since I began hiking the sands of Miramar.

  When I reach it, I find myself in a land apart, an enclave, the kind of place one seldom discovers through conscious effort, only stumbles on while searching for something else. To the north, the rugged point of land juts into the sea. To the south, sea lions bask on sunbaked rocks. Behind me the escarpment rises, a sheer wall undercut by the ceaseless action of the ocean. Beyond the breakers, the surfers kneel on their boards, rising and falling with the swells.

  I stretch out on the sand, my hands under my head, and look up, expecting to see the deep blue dome of heaven. But what I see is the radar antenna, standing between me and the sun, casting its shadow over the sand. From this perspective, it appears even more imposing. I can see the whole of it—the supporting structure that ties it to the headland, the powerful swivel neck, the vast concave dish aimed straight up at the sky.

  If I were a landscape artist, a Turner or a Constable, I would paint the scene from this angle, from the beach below. I would paint the breakers, the surfers on their boards, the sea lions on the rocks, and I would paint the antenna high up on the bluff, overlooking it all. I would not omit it from the painting for the sake of prettiness. I would paint it as it is. I would paint it not as a thing of beauty but as it appears, a blemish on the landscape, an object intrusive on this isolated point of land.

  I feel the anger rising within me. I remember a tree-shaded house on a winding country road. I was sitting at my typewriter, looking out a window through a grove of oaks and maples, when a crew of electricutility workers pulled up in a truck. As I watched, they began to drill a hole at the edge of my front yard. I rushed out and asked the foreman what was going on. He told me he was going to put up a pole supported by guy wires with cables strung across the top.

  “You can’t do that,” I said. “I don’t want to look at an ugly pole every time I look out my window.”

  The foreman waved his hand. “People always say that, but after a while they don’t even notice anymore.”

  I have never forgotten those words.

  The Air Force generals who had a radar station built on this headland understood the truth of that statement. They withstood the protests of those who saw the huge antenna as a desecration, a blight on the beauty of the coast. They knew that in time the structure would become a part of the passing scene, and that eventually people would view it as if it belonged, as if it had always been there.

  I know how it happens; I have done it myself many times. A few months ago a crass billboard suddenly appeared on the Coast Highway. I wrote irate letters of protest; I was so upset, I wanted to sneak up to it in the middle of the night and saw it down. Almost any act, lawful or not, seemed justified. The weeks went by and, as the foreman predicted, the sign became less
obtrusive. One day I drove past the billboard, and it wasn’t until I was miles down the highway that I realized I hadn’t even seen it there.

  But now, as I sit on the beach under the shadow of the antenna, I wonder about the price I paid. I believe I have an inalienable right to the beauty of the earth created long before I was born. But I sense that each time I succumb to ugliness, to the base and profane in my surroundings, I give up a piece of my birthright, and a quintessential part of my being dies.

  The people who betray the land—they see my ability to adapt to ugliness as a portent of progress, an auspicious sign. But I see it as a character flaw, a way of deadening my senses, of reducing myself to an automaton.

  I am not opposed to progress. I understand the role of productivity in creating mass wealth and leisure, and I have the greatest respect for the work of research scientists and development engineers. As a journalist, I have observed the construction of bridges, dams, and highways. I have witnessed the white heat of the steelworker’s furnace; I have reported on the way supercomputers would alter mankind’s view of the world.

  But I am convinced that we know not what we do when we assign a higher priority to the products of our technology than to the natural beauty of the land. It seems to me as if ugliness is a social disease, one we inflict upon ourselves, and it consumes us in our entirety a little at a time. We have been given this Garden of Eden, this land of milk and honey, and bit by bit we are letting it slip away.

  I believe the desire for beauty is built into me, as it is built into everyone, and that our lifelong quest for it is our greatest and most important morality play. Beauty is the antonym of violence, the antidote for all the pent-up rage in the world. We have this choice—we can opt for beauty or we can opt for violence. If we choose violence, then death and destruction will be our reward. If we choose beauty, we will create a bower of quiet for our children, and for ourselves a sleep full of sweet dreams.

  The sun is directly over the radar station, glinting off the steel; I can feel the warmth of it on my face and arms. I rise to my feet, pulling the peak of my cap farther down my forehead to shade my eyes. As I do, I notice for the first time that the beach about me is littered with beer cans. I count them—there are more than thirty strewn about, lying every which way, some exposed, others partially buried in the sand.

  I remember a few years ago hiking with a geologist friend, Lex Blood, five miles up the Grinnell Trail in Glacier National Park. Below us spread a pale blue lake, a glacial tarn; above us rose “the Garden Wall,” the Continental Divide. About halfway up, Lex saw a white object stuffed in a rocky crevice. He poked it loose with a stick and stuffed it in a pocket inside his backpack.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A snot rag!” he snapped.

  The rugged mountains all around us were a place of awe, a veritable storehouse of information about the history of our world. But to one hiker on the rugged trail, they were no more than a handy depository for a piece of tissue paper on which he had blown his nose. I can still hear the moral indignation in Lex’s voice; I can still see the outrage in his eyes.

  I know exactly how he felt, because I feel that way now. I am infuriated by these empty cans, disillusioned by the abuse, the flagrant insensitivity to the beauty of the land. And yet, despite the evidence all about me, I can’t let go of my conviction that the quest for beauty is as inherent in the individuals who littered this beach as it is in me, as it is in every woman, every man.

  Why do they do it? Why do they carry their beer cans to this lovely, isolated beach when they could just as easily sit on a city curb or beside a garbage dump? I believe they do it because they have no choice. They are drawn to the beauty of this place; this is where they have to be.

  But when their party is over, it’s as if some imp of the perverse takes over—as if they have to prove to others, to their friends, their peers, that they are immune to the force of nature that lured them here. To behave otherwise would be a tacit admission that they feel a connection to the land, an attachment to sea and sand, a bond with what they perceive as sacred in the world.

  A genuine expression of reverence seems to be something they can’t afford. I see the results of their repression in the litter they leave behind. These empty cans scattered about my feet speak to me with a power that transcends words. They tell me that those who made this mess are in rebellion against themselves.

  I live in a time and place that puts a premium on hardheadedness. I know a man who constantly ridicules his wife’s desire to go down to the beach at dusk and watch the sunset. “Women love sunsets,” he says derisively. He wants to be seen as a practical fellow, a pragmatic man of business. And perhaps he is. But I can’t help thinking that this pragmatic man he purports to be is merely an identity he has chosen for himself, a protective coating that comes between him and how he feels, truly feels, in those rare moments when he lets himself.

  I can see little difference between those who say they are indifferent to sunsets and those who travel to the beach and litter it with empty cans. Both are attracted to beauty; both are afraid of what others will think if they admit that it is so. Both have a vested interest in appearing cool and tough. In their view, it is the cool and tough who inherit the world.

  But that strikes me as a destructive approach to life, one founded on self-denial, which is a form of suicide. I am wary of those who suppress their desires, who are deprived of beauty either by choice or circumstance, for I never know at what moment they will explode.

  I think of the multitudes pressed into the ghettos of the world. They see no green hills, no grazing sheep, no flowering meadows, no soaring birds. Day after day they walk the pavement and stare at the stark walls. Separated from all that is natural, they suddenly strike out wildly, looting and razing, smashing windows, overturning cars. They rampage through the streets, consumed with rage, never realizing that what they want most, what they miss most, is what they never had. It is the absence of beauty that drives them mad.

  My early memories of childhood are at my grandparents’ house in Manhattan Beach where there were dahlia gardens, mulberry trees, and a clear view of the sea. I lived with my parents on the West Side of New York, and I can remember how the absence of beauty affected me. The desire to escape the hard, cold city streets governed my every thought; it led to a rift with my parents that never healed. I pleaded with them to move; they couldn’t. Citybound, they remained in their apartment—and shipped me to live with Grandma and Grandpa.

  The arrangement had a logic to it, especially from my father’s point of view. He made fashion drawings for department stores, advertising agencies, and magazines, and he wanted to be near the clients he served. But when he finished his work, he would set a canvas on his easel and paint in oils with a palette knife. He painted the white birches and rocky ledges of the Maine coast. He painted an Indian squaw holding her papoose, both wrapped in a long red shawl. He painted Moorish harbors, and a lateen-rigged dhow floating across the Arabian Sea. He painted out of his imagination sights he had never seen.

  I lost all those paintings in a house fire years ago, but they remain vividly etched in my memory. I realize now that they reveal an aspect of my father’s nature I didn’t know—his longing for a different landscape, one with softer lines and brighter hues. If I could meet him now, I would ask him the question that haunts me.

  You lived in the city, I would say, but you didn’t paint the city. So why did you stay in the city when your heart was somewhere else?

  I long for his answer, but I hear only the sounds of the sea.

  I glance up at the radar station, momentarily shrouded in mist. When the fog clears, I see that the antenna has moved. The massive dish, which had been facing the sky, has rotated on its axis so that it is tilted toward the sea. I assume it has been positioned so that it can track missiles now being fired.

  I find myself upset. I want someone to talk to. In my frustration, I imagine picking up where I left off in my con
versation with the guard at the radar station.

  Why are you doing this? I challenge her.

  We track missiles, she tells me. That is what we’re here for. That is what we do.

  But why?

  Because we must protect ourselves against our enemies.

  But my enemies aren’t your enemies, I tell her. My enemies are those who want to defend me by destroying what I love.

  If you don’t defend what is yours, she says, someone stronger than you will come and take it away.

  I want so desperately to make her understand. I want her to see that beauty is the cause of peace, that missiles are the cause of war.

  Don’t you know, I say, that we can’t put an end to human hostility by appropriating a headland and putting an antenna on top of it. We can’t create a peaceful world by building missiles and tracking them across a thousand miles of open sea. There is only one way we can create a peaceful world, and that is by bringing beauty—the beauty of art, the beauty of nature—to people everywhere, because that is what they crave. Each time we remove a portion of beauty from the world, we diminish ourselves.

  Spent with effort, filled with the futility of words, I let the image fade.

  The time has come to leave. I climb the steep path to the top of the bluff, where I pause for a moment to survey the vast expanse of the ocean. Below, I hear the hoarse croak of a raven. I see him soaring on ragged wings along the ridge. He lands on a ledge and flutters into his nest, a hole in the cliff, no more than it needs to be. I gaze at the place where he disappeared; I can barely see it. The essential character of the raven’s nest lies in its invisibility, in the way it blends with all the shadows and colors of the world.

  I leave the headland and head for home, thinking that if I could choose between the way of the raven and the way of man, I would choose the way of the bird.

  ten

  the stone skimmers

  Midmorning—and the sun is so bright and glorious in the sky I can barely remember all the past days of windblown fog. A faint onshore breeze, cooled by the Japanese current, brushes my face, the light caress of a woman in the wind. As I walk the beach, I feel as if a great weight has been lifted from me, and I am ready to reach out beyond the boundaries of myself.