Zuma Beach

Personal memory by Evan Applegate

2012Zuma Beach, CA

"Zuma Beach is foggy and cruel, the waves thick and smothering and so cold you can't help but cry out. The surf pounding so hard you're surprised it stops on yards up the sand instead of reaching out to sweep the cars into the green depths. But it's my childhood beach. Locus of body surfing and rookie sunburns and shaking sand out of car mats. I didn't know about eutrophication or garbage patches or coral bleaching or the galaxy of harm inflicted on systems once thought too vast to be affected by man. But I want that beach to survive, so my kids can feel the exhilarating physics of the waves as I did. I just don't know how."