Whenever I go on an extended trip like the one I just took, I vow to keep a daily diary, because I know that as soon as things start happening I will immediately become blinded to the fact that I won't remember these things later.

This vow is hardly kept. It was not kept this time. It would flash through my mind and, blinded, I would ask myself, how is it possible that what I want to write down could ever slip from my mind? How is it possible that I could ever become separated from these words? I actually wrote paragraphs in my head, thinking I would be able to recall them easy as reading a book. Despite years of this not working, I wholeheartedly believed it would work this time, there not usually being pen or paper or time to commit them to ink.

Only two days back, and I feel like I never left. Nor do I remember any stories I wanted to tell, or atmospheres I wanted to portray. It feels betraying and a bit silly to be surprised, but I'm surprised anyway. This should not keep me from trying, even if the trying turns out to be in snippets.

My favorite part of the trip, shared by, I think, no one, was Bean Hollow beach a few miles south of Half Moon Bay. The beach is violent and jagged, presided over by a sign with no less than five strong reasons why one should not swim or surf: sleeper tides, contaminated water, unexpected currents, hidden rocks, sharks. It could hardly be mistaken for a swimming beach, anyway. Mostly, it's foggy and cool, with the waves rolling in and breaking inches from the shore, suggesting a cruel ground dropoff. When the water sucks back into the ocean, it pulls at tiny pebbles and throws them in the air when another wave hits.

On the way over to the volcanic cliffs at the south side, we found a purple starfish with one long leg on the beach. Thinking of that cheesy inspirational starfish story, I threw it back in, even though I don't know how to tell if a starfish is alive or dead. This one was pretty dry and sandy. It was probably dead. Just in case, I threw it out of reach of the waves breaking.

On the cliffs themselves, the rock is a slippery, reddish yellow color that looks almost plastic, except that there are barnacles clinging to every surface and deep grooves cut by water. The deepest grooves have become tidepools, filled with mussels and sea anemones and (presumably) live starfish. The watery end of the cliffs that get pounded at both low and high tide is blanketed in little sea plants with long skinny trunks that look as though a strong wind would crack them, but they are buffeted every five seconds by crashing waves and show no signs of breaking.

I remember once letting sea anemones suck on my fingers when I camped outside of Santa Barbara for Thanksgiving a few years ago, but the ones in these tidepool looked meaner and spikier, almost sea urchin-like, so I refrained, but we did try to feed one a blade of sea grass, which it eagerly accepted, then spit out.

I could have spent all day on this beach (would have camped on it happily despite hating camping) but we were en route to San Francisco and had to sort of hurry. Luckily, a few days earlier, we camped just above another beach in Big Sur, from which whale/seal sightings, rock clamberings, steppings on gross seaweed detritus that felt like corpses under my sneakers, and hysterical runnings from unpredictable waves abounded. There's something I like about the terrifying possibility of getting marooned on a tiny beach by the tide, so we leapt across wet rocks along the coast as foam from the waves splashed us. I saw a tiny orange grip over the top of a slimy rock and thought for a moment it was a lobster, but it was a starfish.