Shorelines

We've lived above the Pacific's shore in The Presidio for five years. From the perch here in the dunes, water invites the eye to extend beyond the Golden Gate, out towards the Farallon Islands, and then take an imaginative journey further west -- Hana, Papeete, Moorea -- moving effortlessly across those blue waves. The Golden Gate Strait is three-miles long and one-mile wide and gives its name to the famed orange-oxide bridge. The current runs at healthy 4.5 -7.5 knots, one of the first things we decided to learn about how the sea works in these parts.
Golden Gate as place name was not derived from the sun's color across this water -- particularly in September and October when we can see the golden light. Mais non.
The topographical engineer for the U.S. Army, John C. Fremont, named this place "Chrysopylae" because it reminded him of a harbor near Istanbul called Chrysoceras, or Golden Horn. (A human trait or folly to demand places be "like something else" -- we all seem desperate for analog when it comes to the land.)
For a mighty view of the Golden Gate unsullied by bridge, climb to the highest point in The Presidio: Rob Hill Campground.
It is also a good place to start a meditation on wild, semi-wild, not-so-very-wild places and the sh*t we do there.
Rob Hill is the only campground in San Francisco. It rests on a wind-pounded hill. It has been a source of much hand-wringing here at the head office. Why? Well, the Haas family gave The Presidio about $15 million to fix up The Presidio and the campground was thus reborn.
They took down many, many trees. While they were redoing it, the place looked like a bomb crater. The footprint spreads out like an enormous canker across newly cleared land.
Before, it was a messy, fusty place -- which for some of us is what camping is all about. (Although I have to say, camping in a city is not really my idea of camping. It's something else -- perhaps a new category under the heading 'how we spend time outside.' More on that later.)
So.
With this dim view of the whole fancy-camper operation uphill from our home, we set out each day for Baker Beach, along a road clogged these days with cars and expensive bikes ridden largely by middle-aged white men in extremely tight shorts and tops. Some of these men talk on cell phones, connected to the cell phone via Blue Tooth devices.
We walk along, trying to stay calm in the face of this onslaught of fancy stuff in our beloved park.
On a recent morning, we followed our usual path -- stairs to the beach and then the sand ladder, on this morning packed with children in the last throes of true child-ages -- maybe 10, 11? Most were either Hispanic or African American. Most were not dressed for camping in a way outfitters like REI or Patagonia would recognize. They were dressed for camping the way we all used to dress before expedition clothes became widely available at malls across the world.
Over-sized pea coats, pink shiny windbreakers, ragged sneakers. Laying down each jacket and shoe on a blanket on the sand, then shrieking when blown sand gathered on their coats and other clothes.
We came to see quite quickly it was a group that had perhaps never been to an actual beach. Talking to one of the group leaders, we found out the children came from just across town, a few miles of streets, a million miles away in the neighborhoods that don't make the coffee table books about San Francisco.
The big, fat, overpriced campsite had been their only invitation to explore a beach here, explore with borrowed clothes and all sorts of ideas of what it would be like.
We tarried there, watching the wildish play -- throwing, splashing, running -- that beaches draw out of each of us.
Then, we noted one girl standing alone at the water's edge, carefully pushing her toes into cold waters.
She turned, hands clamped to her head to keep hair from going awry -- a losing battle, we wanted to tell her, but the beach will school her soon enough, so we kept silent -- and she called out to her teacher: It's so loud! I didn't think the ocean would be so loud!
There you have it. A moment when ideas and impressions crack open.
For reasons we have yet to fully grasp, explore, and articulate, this scene made us weep. A story of one girl, wind, sea, and sky, and the day she came to hear the waves.