The sea lions smelled terrible. I was with my mother and sister at La Jolla Cove, the site of many family trips while I was growing up. We were leaning over the railing looking at the turquoise sea and curled velvety bodies below when the stench hit us.
Apparently the unpleasant smell caused by sea lion waste has been a problem in that cove for the past several years, made worse by the current drought. We hadn’t been back there together for almost three decades, so it surprised us.
It also put a halt to our other trip down memory lane: a descent into the sea cave at Sunny Jim’s Sea Cave store around the curve of the bluff. What if the smell was even worse in that enclosed space looking out onto the ocean? It would ruin the entire experience. So we stayed high on the bluff and moved out of the smell’s range, laughing about it, but disappointed by what had changed.
I don’t know why I even mention the sea lions, because this isn’t a tale of how we returned to a favorite place to find it ruined, or a story about trying to relive the past and failing. The three of us had a wonderful time. And the cove still is gorgeous if you plug your nose.
But those sea lions. They saddened me.
It’s difficult to convey how happy that spot made me as a teenager. First of all, it was so incredibly lush: the weight of the ocean air, the bougainvillea, the tide pools and roaring ocean … the sea lions. My family and I visited California for one week each summer, and on many nights during that week, we would sit on that bluff and eat a picnic dinner after many hours spent bodysurfing at Pacific Beach.
I was raised in Las Vegas – the desert – and California was a fecund dream. I didn’t just want to live here, I wanted to absorb it into my skin, to fit myself into the landscape and never leave. I would marry a man from California. I would raise my kids beside the sea. I couldn’t wait for the day I got to choose where to live.
I took a lot of detours on my way here, first going to college in Ohio and Luxembourg, then grad school in Seattle (where I met a man from California, and married him). We then spent 10 years in Madison, Wis., on a whim. Now, I am finally here, in California, and have been for the past six years.
I still love California, though not with the same unadulterated love of my youth. It’s easier to adore a place when you don’t have to drive in rush-hour traffic or pay for housing or grow old in a bikini.
Being back on that bluff in La Jolla after all this time reminded me why I cherish this state, despite its myriad problems. And standing in that spot again with my mother, who lives in a different California town, and my sister, who flew across the country to be there, made life feel like a series of layered moments, each one coloring and deepening the other, until time no longer struck me as a straight line but something richer and more complicated, a wandering path much like my own long journey from Las Vegas to California.
Contact the writer: hskyler@ocregister@heatherskyler
