Rialto Beach

Author's Comments

I have walked this beach in fog so thick I could not see the sea stacks until I was nearly under them, and that is the version of Rialto I keep returning for. The Pacific here does not announce itself the way it does further south. It arrives in pieces, in shapes, in the silhouette of James Island appearing and disappearing as the marine layer breathes in and out. You hear it before you see it. The cobblestones are part of the experience. They click and roll under each retreating wave, a sound I have not encountered anywhere else on the coast, and on a still morning it is the loudest thing for miles. The driftwood is enormous, bleached, stacked in heaps that suggest the storms this place absorbs in winter when nobody is here to watch. Hole-in-the-Wall is the photograph people come for, and it deserves the walk. Time it to low tide and give yourself the full afternoon. Late summer and early fall are when the fog cooperates with the light, when the sun drops low enough to push through the marine layer in shafts and the sea stacks go from gray to something almost gold at their edges. Long exposures soften the surf into something that looks like breath against the rock. Bring more layers than you think you need. The temperature drops the moment the sun touches the horizon, and the wind off the water finds every gap in your jacket. I have stayed past dark more than once, watching the stacks turn to silhouettes and the sky go through its slow transition, and I have never once regretted the cold walk back.

Gallery