Cabrillo

It's a week later and I'm still dreaming about it. After checking out of our hotel and before heading home from a weekend in San Diego, Mary and I took a side trip to Cabrillo National Monument. It sits atop point Loma, the bay serene and blue and far below on the one side, the Pacific serene and green and far below on the other. From that height we watched three long boarders who had anchored their sailboat off the point and paddled into the line-up at the rocky point. The swells rolled in endless lines, lifted at the point from beneath as if by a giant hand and breaking there, peeling down the line from south to north. It's this jade wall the surfers head for and, if they make it, drop down and left, staying just ahead of the collapse and working the wave gently down and up, until they must pull out or risk the deadly rocks. The whole ride only lasts a few seconds but for those few seconds he is poised right at the brink of unfolding time, a part of the elements as surely as the pelicans, or the sea, rock and sky themselves.