San Diego Coast Walk: Week 10: Sunset Cliffs South

A few distinguishing charafteristics of today's beach walk:
1. We got out the door a heck of a lot earlier than have in previous weeks.
2. We did not spend a lot of time on the actual beach or even in the intertidal zone.
3. There was really no decent public transit serving this portion of the journey.
4. For the first time we encountered a substantial man made barrier.

"We spotted the ocean at the head of the trail . . ."

All and all a different kind of journey, but fun nonetheless. By virtue of our location on the west coast and the weather patterns that bring morning fog, but fairer weather in the afternoon, California is a culture of sunsets Indeed in some cultures West is the direction of death. But the sun also rises. And though we had thick fog at 6 am, by the time we were on the road, it had burned off the coast was bathed in as stunning light, the cliffs all casting shadows onto a shiny smooth sea.

Dawn's early light

Cormorant Rock and its shadows

We are tired and achy and feel like we may have overdone it last week. As Anita said, "Our original intention was to do a 'Beach Walk.'" There are actual sandy beaches along sunset cliffs drive, but to access them requires some rather frightening scrambling, which we were just not up to at this hour of the day. And for this stretch of coast there is an absolutely lovely trail running along the top of the Bluff for most of our way, this seemed sufficient for our needs.

We might be able to scramble our way down there, but not today.

A nice perspective on the shadows over the sea.

We have both travelled this section of the coast quite a bit in our time here in San Diego. I've had friends, family who have lived in this part of town. Yet normally we have stuck to the road rather than venturing out to the various outcrops or side trails. I am sure you could walk this path every day for a year and see new things on each journey. Our unibverse may look 3 dimensional, but the complexity comes in many dimensions than those we immediately perceive. So also is the case for our path through the universe.

As early cosmologists quibble over the calibration of their calendars I find myself wondering how one might weave a linear path through these dimensions beyond our perception, and find nothing quite tangible except perhaps a tugging at my heart.

One of the lovely beaches that we did not go down to.

3-D of cormorant rock from the other side

The Coast here is may look solid, but the reality is that it is quite chewed by wave action, carved into tunnels and arches, etched by names of those before us.

Amy Winehouse was not here.

Anita in front of the Cage

On one the points we spot a cage apparently there to prevent people from stumbling into one of these giant holes. I wonder how many unfortunate souls perished on these cliffs?

The monster roars from within it.

Another natural bridge. There are many here.

Philosophy or some sort of transcendence that I'm not ready for.

I love the light here.

The back side of the cage.

Gull perched

Not a lot of room, go slow.

A lot of joggers and fitness types are present this morning. It's a crowd I once believed myself to be a part of. But after a knee injury at 17 one could say I burned out a little on "the healthy fitness life." Not to say I have been lazy since, just not wanting my life and well being to depend on a routine however nice. This trip down the coast however does feel like some structure, perhaps a return to that ideal, but not really. It's something more. I see the joggers a lost in daydream I know not how to enter, as if there is more to see than just those 5 miles of morning bliss. There is a whole Ocean out there.

Vertigo inducing drop

Gull in the air.

As mentioned before, Anita and I have both wandered this stretch of coast a good bit during our time here in San Diego. One of those times for me was the day before Anita and I met. I was housesitting for a friend in Ocean Beach the weekend of a love workshop almost exactly 3 years ago. The workshop leader had instructed us to find a rock to bring to class the first day. So I wandered out along this path down a flight of stairs to ocean, where i found a nice rounded rock washed by the waves. I recall the mists falling that evening and the weight of the rock (which turned out to be way bigger than rocks others brought to class). On one of the two places where went down today was that cove where I had found my rounded rock. Coming here with Anita felt like bringing it full circle.

Approaching one of two places we get down to the coast.

Stairs to the "tidepools"

Anita and I cast our own shadows toward the Sea.

Part our romance began with a rock from this cove.

A lovely lady in a lovely seaside grotto.

Spash!

A small pool

I became mesmerized by the reflections in the tide pools here. Something about the combination of morning light, the lack of crowds, the complexity evidenced, the way the reflections seemed to give a certain chromatic depth, most of all to the sky.

The stairs reflected

No getting past here

I had hoped to get over to Garbage beach from here and climb the rope up, but that was not to be today. The tide was a bit high and so instead we poked around the pools a bit longer.

Another perspective on the stairs

Anita Walks on Air

Splash!

her wavy complection

looking downcoast

The brilliant sun

Sparkling water

And of course us

A fault in the rock

More sunshine

There is some interesting geology down here, mostly sedimentary rocks with some faulting and unconformities, some evidence for past fluid flow as well, and maybe a few soft sediment deformations. Where the wave action has cut a level platform the various folded beds create a psychedelic pattern of dark and light lines.

Complex pattens in the pools

The sky upside down.

Anita bathed in light

A tree where the house used to be.

Where the road ends the park begins in earnest. It is likely that the whole area used to look like this before the development. It appears that several homeowners facing the eminent demise of their property to the endless surf agreed to be bought out. The foundations still stand, but the vegetation is taking over.
Down to Garbage Beach there is only one way down and one way up at this hour and it's kind of gnarly, se instead we content ourselves with enjoying the many views from the bluff top.
This also meant we could wander a region known as "The Badlands" I have often wondered how much of this landscape is due to all the trampling of vegetation by park visitors and how much is due to non-human processes.

Garbage beach

Lovely geometric rocks

A sea of rich colors

Crumbling foundations

The erosion of the sunset cliffs badlands

Standing before a little canyon

lovely geometry and colors

A formation of dirt

Window to the sea, but still a long drop

more badlands

paddleboarders

"No! Don't leave me!"

One of the ubiquiteous features along this stretch of coast are the stand up paddleboarders. I understand it to be a fairly recent phenonmenon They always look so blissful and meditative. I would like to try it myself sometime, and yet I also sometimes find the whole thing pretentious. I want to see something like a paddleboarder fight or some other antisocial behavior folded into the sport for my entertainment. I tried to envision the two people above arguing, but alas they did not raise paddles at one another the way I hoped they would.

Pigeon roost

Steep chasm!

Surfers on the big waves.

Looking back on garbage beach from the point

Geometric rocks

And so it was the last beach we made it to was very near the end of our walk south. This is a stretch of coast that is often underwater during storms, or high tides. Today there was a small strip of sand for us and waves threatened to retake it at any moment. The draw of this beach is a small cave, that Anita call the "sacred cave" based on what we think the sanskrit translation for sacred cave is.

Our last beach of the day.

The cliff that frustrated any further approach

While we did get a few photos here and a Kiss, the rising seas threatened to soak us at any moment and so I think we had at most fifteen minutes here.

The sacred caves!

Anita at the entrance

The view from within the fold

Hello!

Anita in the chamber

Looking to the limit

Rays of light from above.

Emerging back on the bluff we then faced the first substantiated barrier to our travel along the ocean: SPAWARS. it may sound like a bunch of salon technicians and massage therapists going to battle armed only with warming lotion and brazilian waxing kits, but what they do there is apparently essential to national security, such that two lovers walking the beach could potentially Jeporadize the safety and well being of millions. We like our fellow Americans and wouldn't want to do anything like that to them, so it was that we smiled and turned back to the car, passing the Point Loma Nazerene Univeristy and some lovely homes.