Finding the Atlantic
Falling in love with Florida’s beaches, and healing my inner child along the way
May 1, 2026 | story by Pristine Thai
photos by Alissa Gary and Sophia Bailly
illustrations by Chloe Abreu
This story is from Atrium’s Spring 2026 magazine, which released April 2026.
My mother never liked the beach. Chaotic, she’d complain, as a woman who loved order above all else. Too full of noisy people and clinging sand and the salt-laden stench of the ocean.
Still, growing up in San Diego, I successfully begged her to drive me half an hour to the shores of La Jolla Bay a few times. I quickly learned I was a poor swimmer and cut my losses after nearly drowning in two feet of water. Instead, I settled for the sand, building amateur castles and trawling the shore for seashells.
Most of all, I remember my mother’s face –– perennially pained. Grimacing between forced smiles, always ready to leave. Stormy and overcast despite the California sun. The car ride home was quiet, suffocated by disappointment and heat-induced irritability.
I stopped asking to go to the beach by the time I turned 10.
***
My family moved to Orlando on New Year’s Day in 2019. I was 15. I hated my new life in Florida. I hated the unrelenting humidity and the constant rain. I hated the mosquitoes that terrorized me the second I went outside. I hated being the new girl at school who had no one to sit with for the umpteenth time.
Without my own car, I spent three and a half years confined to my painfully suburban neighborhood. I didn’t participate in the vibrant culture scene downtown. I missed out on Disney World and Halloween Horror Nights, despite living less than half an hour away. And not once did I touch the ocean.
It’s my last “never-have-I-ever” that leaves people slack-jawed. They ask me, incredulous, “How long have you lived here?” Six years, I respond. “And you’ve never been to the beach?” Not in Florida.
Their disbelief is rational. How can you be a Floridian without partaking in the quintessential Floridian thing?
I look for excuses. Maybe I don’t feel like a true Floridian because I didn’t grow up here. Maybe I never had the time or an invite. Maybe I’m like my mother, and I don’t even like the beach.
I didn’t mind my landlocked existence.
Only during my senior year of college did I realize the urgency. In less than a year, I’d graduate and leave without completing the rite of passage that naturalizes someone as a Floridian. Even with my contempt for this state, I suddenly grew desperate to prove I belonged here.
So carpe diem. Let’s go to the beach.
***
Rain spattered against the windshield as my friends and I drove east, cruising through small cities and towns. We passed Interlachen’s tiny police department, church cemeteries in Palatka, gas stations, fruit stands and rural mansions with horses and hunting dogs. The forecast didn’t look too good. We kept driving.
Once my friends discovered my quest, I was inundated with suggestions on where to go, ranging from deep in the panhandle to Miami Beach. We chose St. Augustine only because it was the shortest drive amid our overbooked calendars.
The rain let up, and the sky peeked out somewhere past Hastings. The universe bestowed upon me a beach day. Unfortunately, St. Augustine Beach proper was overflowing with visitors. We went south to Crescent Beach for a less overwhelming introduction.
As we made our way down to the beach, the nostalgic smell of children’s sunscreen wafted around me. Blanket-like stratus clouds blocked the worst of the sun, but the damp, rain-promising heat remained, making my fingers stick together. I could see for miles in every direction, the horizon unobstructed by mountains, so unlike the West Coast.
The sand — dry, chalky, an off-white ivory color –– was smooth and soft. I had never felt sand that didn’t dig into the arches of my feet with a vengeance.
I laid out my towel against the wind and unpacked my beach tote: a wide-brimmed sun hat, a pair of sunglasses I bought that week and a 44-ounce cup of Dr Pepper & Cream Soda. The most important treasure was a spicy falafel Publix sub, because a Pub sub on the beach is a sacred ritual.
I meandered down the shoreline, dipping in and out of the tide. I followed flocks of whistling sandpipers as they scurried back and forth between waves. They didn’t appreciate me slinking closer to snap photos of them. I had better luck photographing fragments of seashells and seaweed cast ashore.
My favorite beach discovery was a small kingdom of sand castles. It had delicately carved windows, drizzled-on spires and a classic moat. Bright plastic buckets and shovels were half-buried nearby, abandoned by the towers’ architects. I bent down to take pictures when a little girl, maybe 6 or 7 years old, ran behind me toward the fortress.
“Do you like my sand castles?” she asked quietly without stopping, as if she didn’t expect me to answer. I turned around to smile at her.
“I do! They look amazing.” Her face lit up instantly. It reminded me of myself, playing sand carpenter in La Jolla all those years ago. I wished someone had told me they liked my sand castles back then. Maybe I would’ve loved the beach sooner.
***
A month later, my friends and I drove southwest, trying to beat the autumnal chill that reached Gainesville. There were fewer towns this time; longleaf pines and sprawling oak trees framed our route, an undeveloped Florida spoiled by the highway slicing through the forest.
We passed through Crystal River, with its kitschy gift shops and palm trees wrapped in string lights, before reluctantly continuing to our real destination: Fort Island Gulf Beach. I wanted a taste of Florida’s west coast. For miles, all we saw were swamplands giving way to marshes. As we neared the end of Fort Island’s peninsula, I wondered where the ocean was. We turned a corner, and I gasped. The ocean had been beneath us the whole time, cleverly hidden by dense wetland vegetation.
The beach was tinier than I expected; I could have walked the length of it in a minute or two. We shared the beach with fewer than a dozen people. It was low tide, and little piles of salt deposits and bird poop dotted the intertidal zone. My mother, ever the germaphobe, would’ve turned the car around. But we stayed.
Fort Island’s sand was just as powdery-soft as Crescent Beach’s. There were no shells but plenty of feathers from the flocks of birds occupying the sand. I worked up the courage to wade into the shallow water. It was darker than the east coast’s but not as swampy as I feared.
I commented on the little holes in the sand under the water. That’s where the crabs live, my friend said. I froze. What crabs? Did they pinch? She laughed and said they wouldn’t come out to bite me. But there were hermit crabs out, if I was brave enough to hold one.
She scooped one up and put it gently into my palm. Holding it close to my face, I peered inside to see tiny claws and legs curled up tight. “Let it wake up,” my friend said. I waited.
The shell turned over, and out came the hermit crab, clearly disgruntled, waving its claws and chattering its mouth. It kept falling off the sides of my hands, tucking and rolling toward the ocean. It was adorable. I loved it. I gave it a little air kiss before letting it go. I wanted 50 of them.
We spent a few more moments hunting for more hermit crabs to bother, sticking our hands in the goopy sand and clouding the water. Schools of tiny fish darted through the shallows, which my untrained eyes only spotted after my friend pointed them out by their shadows. I picked up loose feathers, algae-covered rocks and smaller pebbles I mistook for potential hermit crabs.
It was like seeing a tiny new world at my feet. My mother always discouraged me from getting my hands dirty — she didn’t name me Pristine for nothing — but I couldn’t help exploring; that’s what the ocean was for, anyway, to wash it all off at the end.
If this was the real Florida — secluded coves, half-murky waves, flora and fauna at your fingertips — I liked it. Maybe not as much as Florida’s east coast, with its seashells and sunshine, but there was something wilder here.
***
Back in the parking lot, I got in the car with my waterlogged sandals and sand-speckled legs. Warmth radiated from under my sun-kissed skin as we got back on the highway. Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” came on the radio, and I laughed. Of course, I was wearing Daisy Dukes and a bikini top while listening to this song on the opposite coast.
My friends interrogated me on my beach experiences, helping me remember what I enjoyed most and how it felt to get away from my busy life in Gainesville.
I was most grateful for the tranquility. Walking onto the sand felt like stepping into another dimension — one where my classes, my job and my stress didn’t exist. For a few treasured hours, the beach was our peaceful little paradise.
Our conversation drifted from beach reads and mystery books to work-life balance and what we’d do with ourselves after graduation. The car ride home bubbled with laughter and satisfaction. There was something special about being with people who cared enough to make sure I got to go to the beach.
Maybe the California girl liked being a Floridian after all.
