I’ve lived in many places that open up the sky.
The mountains in Aspen taught me about silence. Berkeley taught me about curiosity. And here in Laguna Beach, walking the edge of the Pacific, I’ve come to understand something else: the gift of space—not as emptiness, but as invitation.
There’s something expansive about the beach. It stretches out ahead of you and around you. The horizon draws your gaze outward, the waves pull your thoughts inward, and everything else—expectations, distractions, noise—falls away.
Walking here is one of the ways I connect. It doesn’t matter if it’s Crystal Cove or another stretch of sand. What matters is the rhythm—of breath, of steps, of water. What matters is looking, listening, being.
A beach is a single destination of many stops—each with something to notice, to feel, or to reflect on.
Here’s how I walk the beach—with my feet in the water and my mind wide open—knowing that while it was always my dream to be able to walk on the beach each morning, I am incredibly grateful to able to do so now
Pause at the Threshold: Start wherever the path meets the sand. It might be a trail, a staircase, or a stretch of sidewalk that suddenly drops into ocean air. However you arrive, pause before moving forward. Notice the light, the way it lands on your skin, the sounds around you.
There’s a shift that happens when your feet leave the pavement and touch the sand. Let that be the beginning.
Step Up to the Water’s Edge: There’s a particular kind of attention that comes from walking barefoot—especially at the place where water meets land. It makes you feel your footing, notice texture, and adjust to change. I often find myself watching the bubbles and foam and thinking about the edges of a painting, or how artists resolve space. Sometimes, just paying attention to how seaweed trails through the surf is enough to inspire a new way of seeing.
Walk slowly enough and you start to notice the choreography of things—waves, birds, footprints, wind. It becomes its own kind of composition.
Look Down at What the Ocean Leaves Behind: I love collecting visual references, and beach walks always deliver. A tangled knot of seaweed, a cluster of shells, a bleached driftwood form—these are sculptures in their own right. Sometimes I take a small something with me. Mostly while I may want to touch something or pick it up to look at it more closely I leave everything to continue their dance with the elements.
If you're someone who creates—images, words, ideas—I think it’s important to let the world show up for you like this. Raw, unscripted, and real.
Take a Seat on the Rocks: Somewhere along the walk, I always stop. Sometimes it’s on a rock warmed by the sun, sometimes it’s just on the sand. I sit. I close my eyes. I listen.
That stillness is part of the walk too. It’s where the space becomes internal.
Choose to Turn Back—or Keep Going: One of the best things about this kind of walk is that there’s no prescribed route. You can walk for five minutes or five miles. The point isn’t distance—it’s awareness. The art of the walk is in how you choose to experience it.
Because every walk is different—and that, too, is a kind of art.
Photography by Shawn Chavez