Thousand Steps Beach

Author's Comments

The stairs are the filter. Two hundred and thirty of them down the bluff, and at the bottom you have already lost most of the people who considered coming. That is the deal Thousand Steps offers, and on a January morning at low tide it is one of the more generous deals on this stretch of coast. I come for the southern end. The tidepools open up there in a way that rewards getting low and slow, and if you have timed it to a negative tide the sea caves at the far end become rooms you can walk into. Inside, the light goes green and strange where it bounces off wet sand, and the arch frames the Pacific like something deliberately composed. Bring a headlamp. Bring a tripod if you want the long exposure that turns the surf inside the cave into smoke. Winter mornings are the version of this beach I trust most. The sun comes over the bluff late, which means the sand stays in cool shadow while the water beyond is already lit, and that contrast is the photograph. Wide for the arch. Detail for the tidepools, where the anemones and the small crabs are doing their patient work in water clearer than it has any right to be. The walk back up is the price. You will feel it in your legs by step one hundred. But you will also be carrying frames that the people who stayed at the overlook on Coast Highway did not get, and that trade has always seemed fair to me.

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