The elk

It's hard to believe the big, antlered elk could survive the SUV's jolting impact. Dazed, the elk slowly and desperately scrambled to his feet and tried to stumble off the busy, pitch-dark roadway. He trailed off into the trees and brush, into the darkness. One by one, his harem trailed across the road, sliding through the night. Bleeding and broken, the SUV limped home.

The beach

Mission Beach is a beach with horny energy, a wind-battered seawall and a parade of people and bikes. The beach is a place where you can rent bikes and take a spin up an down the flatness and watch the curves of life as you ride by.

I spent a little bit of time and money in a cheesy beach shop, wrote a few stories on my computer, and walked up and down the old lined concrete walkway and ate licorice. I was tempted to rent a bike but I wanted to go slower and walk around. I watched seagulls fight for newly purchased french fries, a group of sand sleuths look for metal geegaws, walked on a pier that wobbled with each passing wave and was asked four times to take people's pictures. The pretty people don't say thank you, and the people who don't speak English smile a lot.

Up above, planes taking off from San Diego International Airport reminded me that time was short, and that I'd better not miss another flight like I did a few years ago.

The rusty bikes line up and wait for the next customer to plant their ass on them.

Mission Beach, California.

San Diego in February

What I forgot about California.

The only antidote to a crowded airplane and a bumpy ride into San Diego is a cemetery.

Today the wind is howling at Ft Rosecrans, and unlike a good journalist, I don’t know much about the military cemetery perched high above the Pacific Ocean near the Cabrillo National Monument.

What I do know is that there are comforting lines and patterns formed by the gravestones. The white marble headstones on the seaside hill aren’t the bleached white of the Colorado sun that subdues all color unless you look skyward. The stones here have a faint orange cast to them from the rusty spray from the churning waves below.

It’s quiet up here except for the wind that demoralizes the spirit and messes up hairstyles.

There are several new graves and renovation of some of the cemetery has peeled back the dirt from around the gravestones like peeling meat and skin off an animal bone. Exposed, dark-colored sandy earth look disrespectful, as if the dead matter no more.

Cars with white plates and red and blue writing drive through the patchwork cemetery. Pausing momentarily, they’re not looking for a long lost love, father, mother brother, they seem to seek the conversations between tombstones that are never heard but only seen.

Across the expanse of renovation for the dead, yellow caution tape stretches in the punishing wind, and the dead don’t care.

Time testaments line up and face the ashy-gray waters of the Pacific.

This resting place seems a cold and lonely place to leave a loved one.

I realized that the cemetery and the plane share something in common: the plane moves through the wind with dedicated zeal and the cemetery citizens don't care.