Intersection Logs

After all the contradictory reports, it was a beautiful day, clear and sunny, but the wind was cold. The conference schedulers gave us a free afternoon, and a colleague and I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The first thing we saw was the sea-otter feeding -- starring Buck, a Katrina refugee we last saw in the aquarium in New Orleans back in May. The poor critter seemed a bit unsure about his new environment, and not interested in chasing his food down into the depths; all we saw from down below were a couple of glimpses of a whiskered nose as he ducked briefly under the surface.

We watched big fish in the two-storey-tall kelp forest exhibit, hanging still in the water, just moving gently with the same currents that swayed the kelp, and an octopus, wise-eyed and wrinkly as an elephant, writhing and flexing its suckers against the glass, and silvery sardines swimming in an endless circle in a toroidal overhead tank. Jellies, tenuous, almost transparent, trailed long filaments of stinging tentacle as they danced in their tanks. In a tank of sharks and rays, seacrests flew though the water on stubby wings, their streamlined bodies silvery with the air trapped in their feathers. Corals and anemones and brittle stars waved delicate tentacles. Outside, we stood on the deck in the chilly wind and spotted our hotel across the bay and watched the waves crashing over the weed-furred rocks. The environment with the simulated waves and tides was impressive; we were amused by the shoal of little fish that had found a quiet corner to hang out. We took a lot of bad photos and a few decent ones, and I got some video too.

The gift shop had some amazingly lifelike blown-glass jellyfish, but considering the prices on quite small tchotchkes I dread to think what they wanted for them. I did succumb to a charming little turtle .


Afterwards, we met up with another colleague, and drove a little way down the road, then parked and went scrambling down the rocks, watching the waves in the last light. A bit wobbly with cold and hunger, I was a dubious about the rocks at first, but I made it down eventually, and we found a little tidal pool full of snails and a big, delicately jade-green anemome. The seagulls seemed to like perching on the topmost tips of the rocks, watching the show. After that, dinner seemed like a good idea.

There will be photos, but I don't know if I have the energy to do them justice tonight. I did upload some flowers from yesterday to Flickr.

It turned out there wasn't a reception after all, so after registering we went out for dinner. When we got back to the hotel I spent several minutes on the balcony on the ocean side, watching the sea. The tide was high, leaving only a narrow strip of beach, and the waves came in and in, tall as a row of galloping horses in the distance, then toppling and spreading out to a thin shifting curtain of lace over the sand. Little groups of sandpipers ran in the shallow parts until the waves caught them, and then rode the receding water out. The air was heavy with the salty, fishy smell of the sea.

It's been so long. Not quite as long as I thought; I did spend a week in Nice, France in 1996, and that involved at least one early morning stroll on a pebbly beach, but I don't think the Mediterranean has breakers like that. When I was a teenager we used to spend a day in Scarborough each summer, my father and my sister and I, and I loved to lean on the promenade railing and watch the waves come in.