Campus Point, 2011
I finally got on the water yesterday afternoon. I put in at Goleta Beach and paddled out, past the UCSB skyline, to Campus Point. There was a wind blowing at me on the half-mile run, and once I got to the point, there really wasn’t much going on. A few rides, shallow water, little point break, blown-out from the southwest. Ah well, it was good to get wet (and not a bad down-winder back to the beach).
I remember walking along this very same stretch of beach with my father, years ago. I would have been about 10, maybe 11… it would have been a Sunday afternoon. Warm sand and a long walk on kid-sized legs. The curve of the shoreline seems so much shorter now.
I remember too, a few years after that, coming here with my own surfboard under my arm, a 7’2″ Wilderness single fin. I can see me now, riding up on my bike, through the campus and down to the beach. I’d lock my bike up on the chain-link fence at the marine lab and paddle out into the line-up. Sometimes the waves were big and scary; a lot of times they were more like they were yesterday.
Sometimes a beach is a time machine.
About Ken Campbell
New Release
A story of sea kayaking and science on the rugged coast of Alaska. Coming – Spring 2014.
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