Treasure Island Park and Montage Beach

Author's Comments

The bluff is small. You could walk the manicured path in ten minutes and miss what is actually here, which is everything below. Treasure Island sits above one of the more theatrical stretches of the Laguna coast, and the park is really just the staircase that takes you down to it. I come for the low tides. A negative tide in winter pulls the water back from the rocks and exposes a world that the rest of the year keeps to itself. Anemones closed tight in the sun, purple urchins wedged into crevices the color of bruised plum, sea stacks standing free of the surf for an hour or two before the Pacific takes them back. The light at golden hour catches the wet rock and turns it into something molten. Long exposures here are worth the tripod - the water moving around the boulders softens into mist while the stone holds. The Montage sits just above, and the manicured edges of the resort are visible if you let them be. I tend not to. The cove reads as wilder than it is if you keep your frame low and tight, and the formations themselves do not care who owns the lawn behind them. Time it with the tide chart. The two hour parking is enough if you are efficient and not enough if you want to be slow, which is the better way to be here. Winter mornings after a storm, when the air has cleared and the sand has been rearranged overnight, are when this small park earns the drive.

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