The Municipal Wharf was easy to take for granted. But seeing its end chopped off is impossible not to take personally if you’ve lived here long enough to have spent hours indulging in its half-mile-long pleasures, its cold windy strolls in winter or breezy saunters in summer, its fish markets and restaurants with their old-school grills, its souvenir shops, its laid-back sea lions, its amazing views whichever way you look — sunset behind the lighthouse, cormorants skimming the bay, Mount Umunhum looming in the distance inland, the Boardwalk in the foreground on a warm night with its carnival lights ablaze, the purple profile of Monterey on a clear day — and its ideal setting for young love, romance with a rumbling soundtrack, a place to share an illicit smoke or a windblown kiss with your sweetie.

West Cliff Drive, the Cement Ship, Seacliff State Beach, the Capitola Wharf, the Santa Cruz Wharf, the harbor, all whacked by rising seas and smashing waves and lashing storms, atmospheric rivers and derechos and bomb cyclones and king tides and stray tornadoes — what’s next, the Giant Dipper ripped to shreds by a tropical breeze whipped into a hurricane by an overheated ocean? The coast is not clear, it’s clobbered by climate change, and all the riprap in the world is like the rolling stone of Sisyphus, destined to be rolled into the ocean by monstrous surf.

But what’s not to like about big waves? I haven’t been in the water for decades, but the sight of those gorgeous monsters rolling in from the west in sets, reflecting a silver sky, one cresting after another, foaming all over the shoreline, is enough to get your blood humming with their oxygen-rich energy — you feel it in your body by breathing. Much as I may mourn the loss of a beach or the natural bridges I remember from half a century ago, or some human structure hammered by agitated nature, I don’t have any illusions about what we’ve brought on ourselves by burning up the planet and releasing its carbon into what once seemed an infinite sky.

If I owned front-row coastal land, I would live there year round and make the most of these days on the edge when the weather sends mixed messages of Mediterranean perfection and catastrophic destruction; I would appreciate every moment with astonishment, as if for the last time. Lots of people in lots of places are going to have to deal with devastation, roughly and randomly dished as the cards are dealt. Earth itself is the house in this cosmic casino, and the house doesn’t lose. But we do.

I wish my city all the luck in the world, and all the money it will take to reconstruct all the landmarks whose endurance is being tested by an uppity ocean and all its awesome systems with their diverse shapes of disaster. I don’t want to be caught in blinding rain or dragged out to sea by a sneaker wave or even be left in the dark at home when the grid goes down assaulted by a storm, but this is where we live and it’s a privilege. If we’ve had the chance to reside on this curve of coastline for even a few years, we’re aware of how lucky we are, and we don’t take it for granted, knowing it’s only temporary.

I expect the engineers and construction crews will do their usual thing in the perennial contest of man against the elements, and I salute their heroism even if it’s hopeless. As every gardener and homesteader knows, nature is hell; no matter what you do to try to control it, the weeds and the bugs and the birds and the gophers and the weather will have their way. That is our mythic but all too real banishment from Eden into a world where we don’t belong but have no place else to go and must learn the skills to keep our heads above water, so at happy hour we can enjoy the company and the conversation as we sip a margarita and feast our eyes on the view and breathe that air.

The city of Santa Cruz has announced the Municipal Wharf will reopen today. Stephen Kessler’s column appears on Saturdays.