My daughter and I recently flew to San Diego to visit family we haven’t seen in too long. The weather, they reported, had really pulled out the stops for our visit. Indeed, it was quite a change from Minnesota, where it had been biting cold, too cold to bike to work. When we stepped off the plane, it was warm and balmy. The humidity was real.
During our stay, San Diego continued to pull out the stops. What with the sunrises and sunsets, the beaches, the motorcyclists cutting lanes at 50 miles per hour. We met up with old friends, and more family. As always, I brought the requisite book to read that was dead weight in my baggage. I didn’t read a single word. The short trip was a whirlwind.
There are many things to do in San Diego. I haven’t done nearly any of them. But every trip I make to San Diego I make a point to visit the La Jolla coves to see the seals. The seals have their own beach. At least for the meantime. Until someone clubs them all to death to turn this last strip of land into a luxury hotel. Until then, this beach is acrawl with cute, fuzzy seals. Mostly mother seals and their cubs. What a thing! To visit a beach that is always pre-loaded with adorable seals. A free zoo, just, there.
There’s one spot, you can walk right down and stand on the same beach with a bunch of seals. Don’t stand too close though, or a park ranger will call you out on a loudspeaker from a lookout tower nearby.
Get too close to a harbor seal and her cub, they warn, and you could spook the mother seal. A harbor seal mom, properly spooked, will abandon her cub for the safety of water. I don’t know if this is actually true. This was the park ranger’s warning, which sounded frequently because people are awful and are always getting too close and commanding their children to get even closer so they can take a picture of their stupid kid with a panicking harbor seal.
This is where I was on the beach, (at a proper distance from the seals) taking pictures like crazy. Of course, there was a small crowd behind me, also taking pictures. From this crowd, I overheard a conversation between two men.
“Thing is,” said one. “I live just up the block. A ten minute walk from here. And I haven’t been down to see these damn seals for two years. It took the in-laws visiting from Kansas to bring me down here.”
I tried to remember the last time I’d visited Seal Beach. It was March, the last time I visited almost a year ago.
The seals were really laying it on thick. The cuteness. I mean, they aren’t sea otters by any stretch, but still, the pups were yawning in the warm evening sun, scratching their belly’s and nuzzling their mothers for milk. They preened at their impossibly fluffy fur, matted with a dusting of sand so fine and white it looked like powdered snow.
But this guy’s comment. It was annoying me.
I can’t imagine living a ten minute walk from this beach and never coming down here. But then, I don’t live in La Jolla. So, who knows? After months of daily visits to the seals, would Seal Beach become humdrum? Maybe I would visit less and less. Maybe I might stop visiting altogether, and might not even return until friends were in town, looking for a local guide.
I know what that’s like. It wasn’t until I started getting into photography that I’d make an effort to really get out for the sights. Before then, I rarely did the tourist thing in my hometown. lt took visiting friends or relatives to push me to do the thing. I wonder if this is a universal thing? How frequently do San Franciscans visit their Alcatraz? How often does a New Yorker venture up their Empire State Building?
Inevitably, I got to thinking about the places we call home. Having recently moved from Portland, Oregon to Minneapolis, this is something that’s been on my mind. Maybe that’s why this overheard anecdote clung to me so.
To leave Portland was an emotional decision. If I think about it for too long, it can become overwhelming. The geography we’ve left behind – not to mention, our dear friends – the forests, the beaches, the rivers, the mountains, the Gorge and on and on… Again, think about it all at once and it can be too much.
But then, I remember. When I lived in Portland, I rarely, if ever, visited any of the local attractions. Not for lack of trying, mind you. There were weekends. We drove out to Sauvie Island for pumpkins, or fruit. On determined bike rides I’d try to soak in as much of the west hills as possible, up Saltzman or, if I was feeling risky, Old Germantown. Sometimes I’d push on, to Skyline and, legs willing, west past Hillsboro.
But if I’m honest, these trips were the exception. Mostly, it was too tempting to stay home and tinker on projects or just park it on the couch to watch a thing.
I should then reconcile, whether the heartbreak I feel for Portland is for the places I frequented? Or is it for the places I wish I’d frequented?
I need to remember to get outside more often. I get comfortable too easily. Even though the universe is telling me otherwise. Today the universe sent me this quote, care of David Lynch: "I don’t like going out anyway. I like to stay at home. Of course I do think it’s important sometimes to go out and see new things and feel the so-called reality. And that can conjure ideas. But I think human beings can sense the air and feel what’s going on in the world without going out."
Whatever, David Lynch.
Back to Mr. So-and-so at Seal Beach. I was still thinking about his comment. It had me thinking about travel. (Being in San Diego, technically I was traveling.) Travel can provide perspective. The pandemonium of travel makes me acutely aware how much I am a creature of habit. This paradigm shift I was enjoying on Seal Beach, I had to share with this fella, who only had to walk ten minutes to get here.
I thought his was both frustrating and reassuring. Frustrating because I know how ungodly expensive it is to live in La Jolla. It seems a shame to pay a premium to live in a place and ignore such an attraction as Seal Beach. But this was reassuring because, maybe we can get that same cross-country feeling from venturing just ten minutes from our regular routes?
A couple days later I returned home to Minneapolis. I brought with me an obnoxious amount of pictures and some delicious perspective. It was sharp at first, with the first few days back home, then dulled some, and eventually dissipated the longer I stay put. And that is okay. There is a nice, symbiotic balance between routine and chaos.
Even though I am actually not a big fan of San Diego (the heat, the douchebags) I look forward to my next visit. But also, I am happy to be home again, about to throw a leg over my bike and ride Nicollet to the Midtown Greenway, which takes me to the West River Parkway, the Lake Street Marshall Bridge to Marshall street and on to Saint Paul, where I work Monday through Friday.
(I have weekends off, thank God.)