Our Environment: “The Coast of Northern California” by Scott Turner
Monday, January 06, 2020
Everyday aspects of our world, such as the pattern of bark on a tree, thrill me.
Maybe that’s why while ogling two red-tailed hawks floating motionless over the trail, my daughter, Rachel, tugged at my arm and said, “Dad, did you see it?”
What I’d missed, while eyeing the raptors, was the panoramic view of the bluffs, beach and Pacific Ocean within Cowell Ranch State Beach in Half Moon Bay, California.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThis was big nature—majestic sheer cliffs over a thundering sea and a sweeping cove of a beach maybe a quarter-mile-long and almost devoid of people.
Although still thrilled and distracted by the hawks I descended a precipitous staircase of timbers to the somewhat pebbly sand along with Rachel, our son, Noah, and my wife, Karen.
Since last July, Rachel has lived and worked in San Jose, and this was our first visit to see her and some of the sights of Northern California.
We’d approached this spectacular scenery via a flat straight trail west through farm fields and low, heather-like vegetation. Only at its ocean terminus did I understand that we were atop a mesa with a drop-off worthy of a Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoon.
There was a golden color to the beach and Rachel said that if we looked carefully we might discover tiny bits of sea glass among the relatively large grains of sand.
Indeed, upon closer inspection, we began to find small pieces of polished blue, brown, clear or green glass.
Meanwhile, the two hawks hovered overhead, joined by two Common Ravens. I also witnessed quite the aerial move, when a smaller raptor took a dive at a red-tail, which flipped over, talons up at the tinier hawk.
The smaller bird veered off and the red-tail turned back over. The entire encounter took no more than a second.
At one point, we all stretched out on a blanket. How exciting that when we looked up, the pair of ravens floated less than 100 feet directly above us.
When we arrived at the beach at about 3 p.m., the cove air was salty and crisp. As the sun began its descent, a minty smell enveloped the coastline. The air temperature was about 55 degrees. The sky was mostly clear. A steady, but not staggering, a breeze blew in from the sea.
I did not know the names or characteristics of the local plant life, so I was unable to determine the source of that spicy scent.
We climbed the staircase to the trail to witness a universal aspect of our everyday life—the sunset. A line of low gray clouds gradually turned a butter-and-tiger sky into a dispersed pinkish-purple and silver glimmer.
It was strange to look over an ocean at the setting sun. For much of my life, the sea has been to my east, which means at sunset, I’ve turned my back to the waves. I guess this flip in scenery was a final fitting feature to my first day on the Northern California coast.
Scott Turner is a Providence-based writer and communications professional. For more than a decade he wrote for the Providence Journal and we welcome him to GoLocalProv.com.
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