We drove to La Jolla today, where I stepped into the Pacific Ocean for the first time in my life. Spent most of the time trailing behind our two older girls and lifting them up out of the water when a wave threatened to knock one or the other off her feet. The other thing I noticed is that the surfers looked like regular people, not Platonic forms of southern California perfection.
Keats seems to have thought that Cortez, not Balboa, was the first European to make it to the Pacific Ocean--see his "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer." The best poem about the view from the shore was written by a New Englander, Robert Frost. "Too far out, girls!"
