We're lucky here in Paradise Cove to see the natural movement of sand as if shifts from day to day, from season to season, and from year to year. There are no sea walls here, no houses on the shore, just the ceaseless sweep of waves against the bluff.

This time of year, big storms with big tides eat at the beach. In between, lower, slower tides build it back up. Here's the beach right now, a slow accretion of dark wet sand left by a million little lapping waves, standing a quarter-inch taller. The beach is growing, another part of the natural cycle here in the new year.