TIM RAINS

Sand Dollar Sunset is a tribute to Ten Mile Beach — our summer home away from home for as long as I can remember. We camped, stayed in seaside houses, and spent our childhoods roaming these shores and the nearby forests for one precious week each year. It was a time for discovering and exploring, but also for learning the language of our family — a small world within the larger one, wrapped in the poetic isolation that only this coastline can offer.

As we grew up, we returned — and now we share it with our own kids, passing along the same quiet wonder, the same trails and tide pools, the same thrill of finding a perfect sand dollar in the sand. But there comes a moment when everything stops: at last light, when sea and sun meet in a fiery flash of oranges and reds. It’s a feeling carried deep inside — a beautiful tangle of memory and emotion — and also a time to stand still and watch the wildlife, to take the last slow beach walk of the day before heading home to dinner, salt still on our skin, wonder still in our pockets.

For my sister, Sarah.

Constellations: Capricornus, Cassiopeia, Cygnus, Draco, Leo, the Milky Way, Pegasus, the Perseid meteor shower, Sagittarius, and Ursa Major drift across the sky above the beach.

Sea life: Bull kelp, California mussels, green shore crabs, harbor seals, humpback whale spouts, moon jellies, mule crabs, purple shore crabs, and sand dollars gather in the shifting tides and shallows.

Birds: Bonaparte’s gull, brown pelican, California sandpiper, long-billed curlew, red-necked phalarope, surf scoter, western gull, and willet keep watch on the shoreline and in the surf.

Places: MacKerricher State Park, Laguna Point, and Ten Mile Beach — the timeless stretch of sand and rocky coves that call us back, year after year.