Ever since the first people navigated this coast aboard Tomo Canoes, Refugio has been a refuge. Sir Francis Drake knew this place, and Cabrillo knew it. And if you've ever seen the channel with 10 feet of swell and 30 knots of wind, you know what a safe corner Refugio is as well. That clean crescent beach, thick kelp beds, a bending little wave in the cove. Halibut loved the cove in summer. You get lucky enough to spear a keeper or catch one by hook and Line, and you can cook em up right there at the State Park campground. Only the park is closed now. Even the airspace above it is closed. May 2015, pipe ruptured, 100,000 gallons of oil spilled down a culvert and washed into Refugio. I see a hell of an oily mess. Useless. Seabirds all wrecked. Kelp forest denuded. A gasoline rainbow. But I drive my car every day. I also sail and row my boat Cormorant in these channel waters, take my little girl surfing here, proning out on the nose of the glider I shaped. Of course the blank and the resin and the glass on my board are made from petrochemicals too. Everything I buy has been packaged and shipped via fossil fuel. And I'd be a fool to claim some personal exemption from the share of responsibility in this disaster. Wherever there's oil infrastructure, inevitably, sometime, somewhere, there's an accident. The ruin of our coasts is too great a cost no matter the price of a gallon of gas. My name is Christian Beamish. I'm a surfer, a writer, a shaper of surfboards and boats. I want to take my kids to Refugio, teach them to time the sets and launch Cormorant off the beach, teach them to learn their breath and glide underwater through the kelp stocks. But we'll have to wait.