Northwest winds forth waves crashing on the wilderness beach. Pungent salt air streams up sand mountains bouncing quartz grains around my ankles. On the dark side of the dunes, grey sand is silky cool. On the sunny side it is warm and white. The sinuous and dunes reaching 500 feet above the sea, stretch for 18 miles along California's Central Coast, and are now protected as the Nipomo Dunes Preserve. The Department of Fish and Game asserts: "It is the largest and most beautiful dune-lagoon complex in California. The West Coast's high dunes started forming 18,000 years ago when much of the world's water was frozen. Sea level was some 300 feet lower. The coast was about five miles farther West than the present shoreline. As inland mountains eroded and sand grains blew as far as 11 miles inland. The oldest dunes are on top of Nipomo and Orcutt mesas, and are stabilized by plants. Younger dunes nearer the beach are sparsely vegetated ridges and hollows created since the end of the Pleistocene Epoch.