Photograph by Matthew Suárez
What needs protecting? The beach and the bluff. Both things make the coast and the coast is being ravaged.
The Sand at Encinitas
Jayme Timberlake tide-watcher, restoration ecologist, avid surfer light-foots it down Encinitas’s iconic Stone Steps. She’s barefoot, having kicked off her shoes and left them on the sand-dusted floor of her truck cab. Desk-chained me follows, white legs and black tennies. We gaze up at the sentinel sandstone cliff-backs beside us and their telltale, sharp-edged furrows (or rills) of erosion. The sight feels perilous: 100-foot escarpments, topped by private homes and the occasional railroad-tie buttress.