Again, Saturday morning, the quiet gray skies over La Jolla's shoreline gave way to patched blue and white patterns and the same sun rose, slowly, turning the dark beach light as I ran through the surf (a perfect entry, this time) and out into the deeper salt water that hides the plummeting depths of the La Jolla Trench and natural preserve.

Along the cliffs, thick with half-asleep cormorants and pelicans wondering about fishies six times a minute, the crude stone ledges provide ample support for the harbor seals and sea lions. The males are particularly fond f the ledges just along the cave entrances. For sport thay dive into the surf, and surface in the dead centerline of the cave entrance, and bark loudly in their best sea-bully tones. The caves multiply the sound and the roar of a much bigger animal comes out of the cave only slightly delayed. This makes them feel mighty proud of their capabiltiies. Then they go off and bite the teenage males on the ear to show them who's boss. The females doze through the whole show--they seen it all and heard it all, and they'd switch allegiances in a deepwater minute if some hot young Leo managed to scare off their current alpha male. Bu that is rare.

Cruising just off the ledges along the shore line, you have to keep one eye over your shoulder for the occasional larger wave, and swing into and over it if it arrives. You don't want a salient to suddenly pick you up and carry you onto the shoal rocks.

There are small coves where isolated beaches never visited by the noram crowd sit in the sunrise, isolated and pristine. There are rugged rocklines and there are concrete seawalls where human vanity has interceded to build shore mansions.

You follow the curve of the bay until you come back to the hotel beach where the street access brings dozens of cars onto the sand to offload their kayaks and surfboards. The shoaling here is long and gradual, and the breakers come in sets. You move shoreward on the swell, feeling the passage of time as the ocean itself defines it, rising and falling. You hold back, and at the right moment you drive hard for the shore. Your prow lifts up as the big one passses under you, moving in faster than you are. Then, just as it crashes and reverses, you finish your run into the shallows and are left neatly on the sand, a perfect exit, unscathed by waters which could broach and tumble you like a dead grunion if you timed it wrong.

The images stay with you all day and you breath salt and sea-water until bedtime.


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