How to harness the high of summer

On Labor Day, the unofficial last day of summer, something happens at the beach.

Everything becomes accentuated. The sailboats look a little brighter, dappled like an energetic oil painting.

Our lives are heightened on this particular day because there are so many expectations.

Maybe we have failed so far at summer. Or maybe the summer was so great we need a proper conclusion. Maybe it’s somewhere in the middle, and we just want to distinguish it as above average.

And so we try. We walk, drive and trolley from everywhere with an extra determination to escape our defined boundaries of land and asphalt.

Even as locals, there is more purpose, almost as if we have to prove we still know how to conquer the thing we love.

This Labor Day was certainly easy to cherish: large swell, hot sun, burning anticipation. What you did with it was up to you.

The waves, for example, were big, roiling and incessant. For most people, they caused some pause. Authoritative and single minded, they made you reconsider your resolve. If you did wade out, they tempted you with bravado. But slowly, like a noose, the water tightened around you.

You fought and tried not to panic. You avoided raising your arms for help because you were sure you didn’t need it. But then you noticed you were much farther out than you thought.

Now you knew why there were so few people in the water.

But it’s your right, you thought, to swim. This is what we do. It’s tradition.

As these thoughts kept swirling in your head, you saw the bobbing flotation device coming toward you. It was like a red paint swatch amid a sea of blue.

“I’m sorry,” you told the lifeguard. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to swim on the unofficial last day of summer.”

Stubborn, we want to do all these things that define the sandy pockets of our lives.

Most wardrobes are filled with khaki, black or floral. They are stuffed with shoes we wear but don’t love. Dutiful uniforms that don’t include quick-dry fabrics, sunscreen stains and sand holes.

In many ways, you are resentful at having to give up your summer efficiency. By now, you’re an expert at packing just the right mix of essentials and verve. You have toys but not too many. Everything has a purpose, and if something doesn’t make you feel good, you leave it home.

You also know when to leave the house before other people to get your favorite parking spot and, by extension, your favorite plot of beach.

Most importantly, you’re confident with your tan. It could be better but you’re not embarrassed either. Just one more weekend, one more day, and perhaps it could last throughout the dark days of winter.

It’s not that you want to preserve the tan unnaturally; you just want to preserve the experience of summer.

You earned that downtime spacing out on the beach. You prioritized your work life, sacrificed hours in an office and gave up easier joys.

You could have stayed indoors during the summer and binge-watched some carefully crafted show. You could have xeriscaped your yard or gone to Costco.

But you wanted something else. You wanted to smell salt. You didn’t mind getting crusty and taut.

If you have a partner, you wanted to feel skin differently, more primal perhaps.

Maybe that’s it. All things become new and exciting at the beach. It’s inevitable that we need a form of renewal.

By definition, the beach is constantly changing, constrained only by the shoreline. How far we go is up to us.

And if we are fortunate enough to jump on a boat, kayak or paddleboard, our world expands even more.

On the unofficial last day of summer, we take stock of our lives. Did we live up to summer? Did we fulfill the promise to ourselves — not at the beginning of summer but when we were 6, 8 or 12, when the summers were endless?

The challenge now is not extending summer, clinging desperately to the trappings of sun and mirth, but to somehow apply its freedom throughout the year.

Because when the water turns cold and the skies darken, there’s nothing better than some generous warmth and optimism to sustain us.

DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at hansen.dave@gmail.com.