A place like San O draws a faithful following. It’s the sort of beach you come back to all your life. It has this isolated planetary affect to it, separate from the rest of the world. It has its rituals: waiting in line on the weekends, the winding road down, the celebratory line of cars along the water, the old men who post up religiously. If the rest of the world stopped, it might stay there entirely unchanged, exactly the same and always.

Places like this surpass cool. There is no pretense, no barometer of ego. It says to you, come near and curl up in my sand with your child, your friends, yourself . Let’s pass your long mornings and your sleepy afternoons together. Come and stay awhile and act like time is not a real thing at all.

We spent our morning drinking coffee, watching slow waves roll in and the fog burn off. Later we made guacamole in the same coffee mugs, surfed, slept, and chased my nephew in circles because he seems drawn straight to the ocean like king Neptune. We lay in sweaters and bikini bottoms and talked lazy with the people parked next to us, and listened Van Morrison from the car stereo. The longest of days. It was a September Sunday as all September Sundays have been for the last fifty years in a place like San O.

#ThroughTheEyes of Jenavieve Belair