Grieving my special "beach getaway"

When I was growing up in San Francisco and was troubled or needed to think, I would go down to Ocean Beach (not far from my house) and walk for miles along the shoreline. As the waves would wash in and then flow back out to sea I got the opportunity to clear my head or make decisions about life, love or whatever was bothering me. The crisp smell of the sea air in my nostrils, listening to seagulls searching for whatever snack they can find, and feeling the fine sand between my toes were the key things to getting me focused and at peace with myself and the world. When I was deciding whether or not to move to Colorado with my then-boyfriend at the ripe old age of 19, I went down to my beach, walked for hours, thought about the pros and cons and made my decision to come here and start a new life.
Whenever I would go back to California and visit my parents who are still living there in the house I grew up in, I would go down to The Great Highway, park my car, grab a sweater and flip-flops and start walking along the beach. What I discovered is that it is not the same feeling for me as it was so many years ago. Whether it is because too much time had passed is hard to say. My beach used to be not quite pristine, but lovely to look at and gaze upon. When I go back now I am appalled at the amount of vandalism, trash and grafitti that are rampant all along the shoreline. You can't take off your sandals for fear of cutting your foot on the broken glass or leftover needles that are casually hidden by the fine sand. The crowds of people now are much larger, louder and less aware of the beauty and peace around them. It seems as if they don't care about where they are or why they are there. Boardwalks that are broken. Needles in the sand that did not belong to diabetics. Grafitti which is painted on what seems like every inch of the concrete walls that are there to hold back the ocean if it were to overstep its borders. All these things that weren't a part of the landscape when I walked along my beach 25-30 years ago.
An era passed and I didn't even realize it had happened until I walked the shoreline and the peace I had once found there eluded me. No longer could a decision about life be made in this place. Too much had changed. The atmosphere and soul of what was a very important place to me were gone. Washed away like the millions of grains of sand that wash in and out with the tides. The peace I had found there had gone with the sand out to sea.