Beachcombing at Miramar (8 page)

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 conversation
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.

M
idmorning—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.

Far down the beach, I come upon two men—one gray-haired and the other balding—throwing stones into the sea. They are walking
slowly, talking as they walk, pausing every few steps to search for another stone. When they find one, they fling it sidearm
across the shallow water, watching it sink or hop.

As I watch them, I am overcome by an irresistible urge. I find a flat skimmer, worn smooth by the waves, and skip it across
the calm surface of the sea. It hops three times. I am filled with delight; I haven’t lost the knack acquired so long ago.