Commentary : Del Mar Is Unchanged in Tourist’s Eyes : Vacation: Development and traffic aside, one family returns each year from Bakersfield to escape world’s woes and revel in the healing power of beautiful beaches.

It’s hard to evaluate the world’s problems when you’re sitting on the sands at Del Mar. One’s global view is skewed by that familiar, comfortable sense that all is right with the world, a sentiment that returns each summer when we escape Bakersfield for your shoreline.

In San Diego, your newspapers, your conversations, are filled with the rapid pace of change, especially in the North County. But in the 18 years that we have been coming from our home in Bakersfield to Del Mar for an annual, two-week vacation, almost everything important has remained the same.

The jockeys who ride at the track still run from point to point on the beach at midday, in a last-minute effort to keep their weight down. The fishermen set up at dawn, or more dramatically, at night. Using powerful lanterns and big poles, they catch perch, corbina, occasional squid and the not-so-occasional sand sharks, which kids are glad to discover are not of the biting variety.

The single people sit mid-beach reading their magazines and textbooks. The families gather closer to the water’s edge with the parents’ eyes set somewhat warily on the horizon in search of roving children.

The essence of North County has not changed, at least for the tourists coming here to escape whatever horrors their summers dredge up.

Start with the sun and the water. The sun is not devastatingly hot like it is in the San Joaquin Valley. There, we have waves of heat, each day building on the last until it is a slow race to see who cracks first, the heat or the people.

Here the sun is bright, and direct because of the lack of farm dust, but never withering. Even if it is hotter than usual down here, the water, clean and cool, never fails to wash the excessive warmth off your skin and makes it feel like it will never get overheated or blemished again.

The ocean has that restorative sense. You never feel better than when you are at the beach.

Friends from the East Coast who we vacation with every year use this time (as we do, let’s be honest), to heal whatever bruises and bumps they’ve incurred through the year. Ignoring Jan. 1, they use August as the start of their new year. We always toast to that and the ring of the glasses is not hollow.

I suspect that we are not alone in treating San Diego’s shores like travelers used to treat the mineral baths in Europe. And for this reason the idea of San Diego and Del Mar will never change.

We tourists and vacationers won’t let it. We need the construct, maybe the fantasy, that somewhere in this country there is a place you can go that has the most beautiful beaches in the world and sunsets that shed their glory nightly over the ocean. Somewhere there is a place where you can get right again.

If we must be fussy, there has been some shifting of familiar landmarks. Desi Arnaz’s house, a longtime fixture at Del Mar, was ripped down several years ago and replaced by two houses. The news was that the developer had sold one of the houses and done so well that he owned the second one free and clear. Yes, we renters were envious, but 15 years ago, when we should have bought, we didn’t have any money, and we don’t now, and we probably won’t in another 15 years.

There is a new European-looking shopping center in Del Mar that appears to be carved out of the side of a mountain. For those of us accustomed to the oversized, lifeless malls, shops with an ocean view are quite a treat.

And there is no closing your eyes to the ferocious growth that has gripped North County in the last 10 years. You notice on the drive down, nonstop houses from San Juan Capistrano to Camp Pendleton--still an oasis of openness--then from Oceanside to Del Mar. You wonder where all the people came from and what they could possibly do to support themselves.

One encouraging thing on the beach is that heavy is in--or at least more in than it used to be. As the Baby Boomers move into their 30s and 40s, they are discovering that no amount of jogging will keep their hip rolls off. But as long as you have kids to present as your excuse, being a little heavy is acceptable at the beach. Somehow, this works equally well for fathers.

As I sit here on the beach, supported by the chair I have found necessary for the past few summers, I realize why Del Mar will never change, for us, your guests. Because what lies in front of us will always be more important than what lies behind us.

The waves come with disarming regularity. The sand crabs wash up in the warm foam, burrowing at the last possible second as the tide recedes. The children form dark silhouettes against the horizon in the mid-afternoon sun as they play in wave after wave.

Twenty years ago, we were those children. Now it is our children. And soon it will be theirs. In the meantime, our lives will come together and fall apart in unpredictable intervals. But down here, it will always be pretty close to how it once was.

There will always be children’s silhouettes against the horizon and people wondering which one is theirs.