Floating

Somewhere on the Orange County coast, a long time ago, somebody walled off a perfect circle of the sea. In summer the water inside it goes clear and green and warm, and for a few minutes at the turn of the tide the whole thing looks like something that should not be real.
The Pacific was running hard that afternoon, big summer sets folding over the rocks and pouring white into the ring. Inside it, none of that reached her. One swimmer floated in the center, arms wide, held in a perfect turquoise circle while the entire ocean roared around the edge.
I flew straight down over the top, and from up there it is pure California. That impossible blue-green water, the gold coming up through the sand, one person completely at peace in the eye of all that noise. You stop seeing a tide pool and start seeing calm itself, the kind you only find at the edge of the continent in the middle of summer.
For anyone who has driven the coast in July chasing exactly this. Printed and finished to gallery standard, made to bring that summer stillness onto a wall. A piece of the California ocean to keep.