Pirate’s Cove beach in Malibu, California. Courtesy Andy Gnias, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
That is the trick in this life, is it not: to have what you need and use what you have?
My friend Larry was telling me about discovering the pleasure of hanging out with his wife on the beach at Malibu. The funny thing is that Malibu was only 15 miles away, over the hills and canyons, from their place up by Spahn Ranch, but somehow they had never gotten around to it. They are not beach people, but Larry told me how relaxing it was to lie on the blanket under the sun and listen to the surf break and whisper onshore. He said if they had had more time he might have gone in the water to get the full experience. Larry thought his pool in California was too cold to swim in most of the year.
We are both from the Midwest. I told him about learning to bodysurf at Malibu in the ’80s, when I was in shape and trained for the water, but I remember the cold ocean pulling back, leaving me wallowing on a sandbar, then 8,000 cubic tons of surf rose overhead and hydraulically broke me in two with the noise of God. Larry laughed and said he just knew it.
We discussed where, among the places we had both lived, we could fully enjoy the natural attractions those places were known for. He knows my belief that we earn the right to enjoy local nature, whatever that is, by being out in it in all seasons. But this week the heat index in St. Louis is 110 degrees, and I am not even using the local bike trail that backs up to my townhouse. There is little else to do nearby, until you drive past St. Louis to reach the rock formations and western hills. He asked if I had ever swum in the Mississippi River. Not at St. Louis, I said. Nobody does, despite the river being a famous part of the city, because of currents, chemicals, and bacteria.
When I lived in the Chicago suburbs I rarely stuck a toe in Lake Michigan, in part because the city was a porous barrier of traffic, people, and difficult parking. When I first arrived in Chicago, I was just out of the service but was thinking about going back in, as a Coast Guard Reserve rescue swimmer, for extra money while in school. Then I saw the lake, down by Monroe Harbor, a heaving mass of cracked ice floes on confused, black water, and decided to work a gas station job well inland instead.
It is not a small problem, finding the right balance of things in a place to live, including that your time outdoors is not just a walk from house to car. Most of us live in a town or city with no view or natural feature. Still, we need community and amenities. Remember James Bond “enjoying death” after he got shot and was presumed dead in Skyfall? He lives in an apparent paradise (on a beach in Turkey) but spends his time drinking himself to death and playing around with scorpions because he has no friends, family, culture, or purpose.
Larry and I ran down the places we have lived, collectively—Illinois, Kentucky/Tennessee, New Jersey, Virginia, Miami, Florida Gulf Coast, Louisiana Gulf Coast, California, Panama, and Germany—and tried to decide which had been the best place to live in terms of natural landscape. I loved the American subtropics and Panama, but there is no perfect situation. Tropical storms, heat, humidity, critters, undergrowth, disease, chemical pollution, and expense affect how the often-stunning land and water can be comfortably or safely enjoyed.
Our friend Sam Stearns in the Shawnee Forest of Southern Illinois, who I wrote about before, has the problem licked, but he was lucky enough to be born in a place he could love his whole life. A friend who teaches in Montana appears to have it licked, living in a college town and hiking in the mountains every week. Another lives on his yacht in the Chesapeake.
Recently, a young influencer on Instagram shot a reel of herself floating neck-deep in the emerald water of the Gulf of Thailand. Heavily forested coastal hills rose in the background.
“Why would you be in a cubicle instead of here every morning?” she asked. The comments were terrible to see.
