Free Beachcombing at Miramar by Richard Bode

this perspective, it appears
     even more imposing. I can see the whole of it—the supporting structure that ties it to the headland, the powerful swivel neck,
     the vast concave dish aimed straight up at the sky.
    If I were a landscape artist, a Turner or a Constable, I would paint the scene from this angle, from the beach below. I would
     paint the breakers, the surfers on their boards, the sea lions on the rocks, and I would paint the antenna high up on the
     bluff, overlooking it all. I would not omit it from the painting for the sake of prettiness. I would paint it as it is. I
     would paint it not as a thing of beauty but as it appears, a blemish on the landscape, an object intrusive on this isolated
     point of land.
    I feel the anger rising within me. I remember a tree-shaded house on a winding country road. I was sitting at my typewriter,
     looking out a window through a grove of oaks and maples, when a crew of electricutility workers pulled up in a truck. As I
     watched, they began to drill a hole at the edge of my front yard. I rushed out and asked the foreman what was going on. He
     told me he was going to put up a pole supported by guy wires with cables strung across the top.
    “You can’t do that,” I said. “I don’t want to look at an ugly pole every time I look out my window.”
    The foreman waved his hand. “People always say that, but after a while they don’t even notice anymore.”
    I have never forgotten those words.
    The Air Force generals who had a radar station built on this headland understood the truth of that statement. They withstood
     the protests of those who saw the huge antenna as a desecration, a blight on the beauty of the coast. They knew that in time
     the structure would become a part of the passing scene, and that eventually people would view it as if it belonged, as if
     it had always been there.
    I know how it happens; I have done it myself many times. A few months ago a crass billboard suddenly appeared on the Coast
     Highway. I wrote irate letters of protest; I was so upset, I wanted to sneak up to it in the middle of the night and saw it
     down. Almost any act, lawful or not, seemed justified. The weeks went by and, as the foreman predicted, the sign became less
     obtrusive. One day I drove past the billboard, and it wasn’t until I was miles down the highway that I realized I hadn’t even
     seen it there.
    But now, as I sit on the beach under the shadow of the antenna, I wonder about the price I paid. I believe I have an inalienable
     right to the beauty of the earth created long before I was born. But I sense that each time I succumb to ugliness, to the
     base and profane in my surroundings, I give up a piece of my birthright, and a quintessential part of my being dies.
    The people who betray the land—they see my ability to adapt to ugliness as a portent of progress, an auspicious sign. But
     I see it as a character flaw, a way of deadening my senses, of reducing myself to an automaton.
    I am not opposed to progress. I understand the role of productivity in creating mass wealth and leisure, and I have the greatest
     respect for the work of research scientists and development engineers. As a journalist, I have observed the construction of
     bridges, dams, and highways. I have witnessed the white heat of the steelworker’s furnace; I have reported on the way supercomputers
     would alter mankind’s view of the world.
    But I am convinced that we know not what we do when we assign a higher priority to the products of our technology than to
     the natural beauty of the land. It seems to me as if ugliness is a social disease, one we inflict upon ourselves, and it consumes
     us in our entirety a little at a time. We have been given this Garden of Eden, this land of milk and honey, and bit by bit
     we are letting it slip away.
    I believe the desire for beauty is built into me, as it is built into everyone, and that our lifelong quest for it is our
     greatest and most important