I Used to Hate the Beach. Here's What Changed My Mind

Time​ Magazine

6 days ago

You're either a mountain person or you're a beach person. At least, that's what I used to think. The two groups aren't just distinct but opposite, the Sharks vs. Jets of outdoor recreation, each side dance-snapping at the other in rhythmic distrust.
There was never any question which gang I belonged to. Growing up, my family skied. We hiked. While no one would ever have described us as 'mountaineers,' our vacations nearly always involved verticality.
What really made us mountain people, though, is that we weren't beach people. On its face, what set us apart was elevation, but really the divide ran much deeper. In the mountains, you pick a point and work hard to get there. If you're hiking or climbing, the goal is above you. If you're skiing, snowboarding, or mountain biking, the goal is below. Either way, in the mountains, a sense of satisfaction and wonder comes through hard work and achievement. You earn your views.
Beach people, on the other hand… well, to be honest, I didn't really get beach people. I understood beach activities: boogey-boarding, bodysurfing, fishing. But just hanging out on the sand, sitting on a rickety chair in the shade of a flimsy umbrella, with nothing but a book or human being for company? That didn't seem merely strange to me. It seemed scary. The Jewish Talmud refers to sleep as 1/60th of death. That's more or less how I felt about hanging out at the beach.
And so, as fate would have it, I fell in love with a beach person.
The coastal Maria to my alpine Tony was Jacqui, a Jersey girl who grew up ten minutes from the shore. We were 25-years-old when we met on OkCupid in its 2011 heyday. She was still in law school at the time. I was a junior speechwriter in the White House. While sleeping in her childhood twin bed was not entirely inviting, the prospect of free weekend getaways was too good to pass up. We made a few trips each summer.
'What should we do?' I'd ask in the morning.
'Go to the beach,' Jacqui would reply.
'Okay, but what should we do at the beach,' I'd ask.
Jacqui would give me a confused look, as though I'd asked what we should do while wrestling alligators or piloting fighter jets through a hail of enemy gunfire. For 'to go' was the only beach-related verb needed.
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It's hard to believe that there was a time when I thought that a 'beach day' was the same thing as 'a day spent at the beach.' The latter is a description. The former, I now know, is a ritual. The details are unique to each beachgoer, yet the experience being summoned is the same.
For my then-girlfriend, now wife, it began at Wegman's, the grocery store that plays the kind of communal role in Central New Jersey that cathedrals once did in Medieval Europe. There, like a witch carefully selecting spell ingredients, she'd pick out provisions. Turkey sandwich with provolone and spicy mustard. Ruffles potato chips. Sparkling water. Blueberries. (Jacqui eats other kinds of berries, of course, but never at the beach.) We'd throw our haul in the cooler, set out in search of a parking spot, and haul our chairs toward the sand.
It's hard to describe how antsy I felt in the absence of a concrete, mountain-person goal. We're letting entire hours fly by! I'd think.
I can't point to the exact moment when I began to feel kind of beachy. But in a way, that's the point. A beach day isn't about discrete moments—it's about time melting into itself like provolone cheese on a turkey sandwich. It's one of the few instances when 'Where did the time go?' can be asked with delight rather than regret.
That's especially true in America. In a country that fetishizes productivity, the beach celebrates the absence of achievement. It gives a quiet, content middle finger to our nation's workaholism. In its own laid-back and lackadaisical way, beachgoers argue that life's most valuable reward isn't a yacht or private jet or invitation to hobnob with the rich and powerful. It's extra time—and the chance to spend it with people you care about. In a country in the grip of rampant and growing income inequality, that's a remarkably egalitarian view of luxury.
For most Americans, the beach is also the country's most accessible public land. Many of America's most pristine woodlands or peaks are deep in the wilderness. That's part of what makes them pristine. The beach is different—and far more densely populated. While coastal counties make up less than 10% of the lower 48 states' landmass, they're home to 40% of its people. For many American families, sun and sand are the most affordable nature around.
And in our often privatized and commodified country, American beaches today remain surprisingly accessible. There are ongoing fights about the dwindling number of public beaches, and reasons to be concerned the number will shrink. But for now, in both law and theory, the beach belongs to everyone.
Nor has beach access devolved into yet another red versus blue issue. California and Texas like to present themselves as polar opposite visions for America. But one thing they have in common is that the public has a legal right to access the beach.
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That's one reason why—while the fantasy of a private beach remains the prevailing one in beer commercials or posts from travel influencers—in real life the beach is increasingly a melting pot. Nationalists like Stephen Miller suggest that when people from different backgrounds share the same space, the inevitable result is chaos. The beach belies that. That's especially easy to see here in New Jersey, the most densely populated state in the country, and one of its most diverse. When people from vastly different groups hang out on the beach, what happens is pretty simple: they enjoy themselves. That's not because they're trying to prove a point about multiculturalism. It's because, if you're not enjoying yourself on the beach, who even are you?
The beach isn't perfect. If someone ran for president on the single-issue platform of 'No blasting music from giant Bluetooth speakers on the sand without your fellow beachgoers' consent,' they'd have my vote. But while I still love to ski and hike and earn my views, I've realized that sharks and jets exist in closer symbiosis than I once thought. We don't have to divide ourselves into mountain people and beach people. We need both. And if we're lucky, we get to be both.
One night, almost a decade ago, Jacqui and I went to Long Branch, New Jersey on July 4th. We staked out a spot on the jam-packed sand and laid out our blankets. There were at least a half-dozen languages being spoken, but no translation was needed. We sat together, chatting in anticipation of the fireworks, enjoying a quintessentially American experience.
After the last boom echoed over the shoreline, everyone went their separate ways. But not immediately. There was a moment when all of us—thousands of us—lingered and listened to the ocean. We sat there on the edge of the infinite, each of us knowing that, for a moment, anyway, we had all the time in the world.