South Carlsbad State Beach Sea Cliffs

Author's Comments

The cliffs face the wrong direction for sunrise and exactly the right direction for everything else. In the last hour before the sun touches the Pacific, the sandstone goes from beige to something closer to amber, and the small drainage cuts that score the bluff face fill with shadow that gives the whole wall depth. I think of these cliffs as a slow canyon - not a canyon you walk into, but one that walks beside you for three miles, broken occasionally by a notch in the rock or a cave the tide has hollowed out and abandoned. Winter is when I prefer it. The summer crowds are gone, the campground above is quieter, and the low sun reaches further into the gullies and small alcoves that summer light passes over. Walk south from the campground entrance. The cliffs grow taller as you go, and somewhere in the second mile you will find a section where the layering in the sandstone reads like pages, horizontal bands of warm color that catch the light differently depending on how the wind has worked them that week. Watch the tide. The caves only open at the low end of the cycle, and a falling tide in late afternoon is the rare alignment that gives you both access and light. Bring a wide lens for the scale of the wall and something longer for the abstractions - the textures, the weathered patterns, the small geometries the water has been cutting for longer than any of us will be here to see it.

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