I rose before four on the morning of the FOurth, and drove down to the SHores with my kayak. In the darkness before dawn, I rolled out onto the hard-packed sands and unloaded my sea-kayak and set it up, and then found a place to park--not as easy even at five AM as you would think. THen I strolled the beaches until the first light began to make things more visible.

In the dark along the beachfront, there was clump after clump to be found of families who had crept out of bed even earlier than I had, or who had camped on the beach the night before, staking out the space they required for their family day on the sand. They had small fires burning merrily in the firepits, they had stakes, awnings, tents, or just seaweed dragged into rectangles, to mark where their turf on the beach would be when the crowds flooded in and packed the whole place.

When the sky lightened I went back to my kayak and launched on a northwest track, heading out toward the kelp beds. Once you pass the surf-line, a calm overcomes you--the water at this hour is flat and still except for the slow rhythm of the incoming tidal waters, which rise and fall gently until they reach the shallows where they curl and break in small rollers.

Heading further out, you arrive over the deep chasm of the La Jolla Trench, where the bottom at thirty feet changes suddenly from an undulating sandbox floor to a canyon, tumbling down to several hundred feet deep in the space of perhaps a half-mile. There are bouys at the surface that mark the boundaries of an Ecological Preserve, forbidden to spear-guns or lobster traps. I paddled out to the furthest buoy which i perhaps a mile from shore, and bobbed up against it, and watched the sun on the waters. I heard the splashing of the fingerlings breaking the surface, and watched a cormorant decide on breakfast and plummet down from the air into the water to catch it. A splash to my starboard side caught my attention--a whirling spiral in the water about thirty yards off. A moment later, the author--a large harbor seal -- breached right alongside, rose up and examined me with a beady eye, and slipped below the dark water again.

Then the fog moved in. The view of the distant beach, shadowy, punctuated with glimmering campfires, disappeared. The view of the horizon west vanished in a wall of mist. I found in the space of a few minutes that I could not see more than thirty yards in any direction. As I paddled away from the bouy, I realized I had no orientation points--I could not tell if I was leaving that lone spar behind me to the south or the east or the west or the north. Only the mist. I took bearings from the set of the sea, and moved through the fog without seeing. The distant sound of the surf was hard to pinpoint in the fog, the sound diffuse and reflected so its direction was hard to make out.

Paddling through that mist was like an adventure in the Twilight Zone, or some metaphysical adventure through the boundaries of one's own limitations. The bouy vanished, and the sounds were muted, and I paddled--left, right, left right, rest.

It turned out well, of course. The sound of the surf clarified as the fog began to thin somewhat, and then I heard a human shriek from one of the campers, and any uncertainty about where I was lessened. The dark outline of Mount Soledad, haloed by fog with sunlight bouncing around in it, slowly appeared, and as I steered for it, the fog lessened further until I could see the beach again and make my way slowly back toward it.

I came back into the grip of civilization, riding a slow, low breaker into the shallows, and drew my little ayak up the sands, and went and got the car.


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