Walking the San Diego River: Week 6 and 1/7: The town of cats revisited

Following our retreat in the heat I found myself entering a kind of funk with regards to the remaining river journey. With temperatures soaring into the 90's this early in the year things did not look very promising. It's not that much cooler as we rise and shade in the river valley is surprisingly sparse. So I took some time off and went to Balboa Park and visited the Museum of Man, where I came across the most interesting exhibit to date on the Kumeyaay and their neighbors. As I was there I happened to run into a group of folks on a field trip as part of a 10-week class offered by Mission Trails Regional Park. Mentioning this blog and walking project, I got a lot of positive input from the many participants.
As we've been walking I have come to realize how little I actually know about this region through which we are passing and how much I want to know. There is plenty of history, culture and nature that goes unnamed in this blog because I simply have not learned it yet. I got a newfound awareness of all the ways local plants were used and what they provided and how people here have lived throughout time. It has not always been as it is today, and in many ways it was more difficult then, but yet we perceive it as more in harmony. It was perhaps so, but more due to the relatively low populations compared to the present day. As we've walked up the nearly dry riverbed that flows through the heart of a city of over a million I wonder what is "harmony" anyway? We spend less on home heating than elsewhere in the country and on the coasts we don't even need air conditioning. The price of this idyllic temperature range is that we need to import our water from the Sierra and the Colorado Basin. Is it perhaps better to settle toe worlds coastal deserts and then import the water, or keep people where they are and keep burning up fuel to heat homes? Given that most resettlement efforts have resulted in hardship if not outright atrocity on those resettled I'd say we stay put, but I still think about it sometimes: ways to reorganize civilization to live in harmony off less. I have dreams of being in the Colorado near where it flows into the Gulf of California, looking up the dry riverbed and seeing a wall of water come toward me on all sides. Powerful really.
It seems there is much river to explore that we go right past, so perhaps we will fill in the weeks where we can go no further by going deeper instead . . .

So the weather is supposed to be cooler next weekend, and the temperatures right along the coast are actually alright, so Anita and I set out for a little excursion to a place we've been to on a previous journey: The Town of Cats
Though we began on Dog Beach and saw the mouth of the river there, this is also the mouth of the river, albeit more logistically difficult to reach via public trans. Unlike dog beach which is open, on every map, kind of dirty and often crowded and social, the Town of Cats is a more solitary destination, a single jetty that you're not officially supposed to wander down and no official organization can endorse the exploration of.

Our walk down the Jetty is blocked by a fence, but there is a hole in the fence. There may have been a time when people believed in fences more and better fences made better neighbors. We have evolved since then. It seems here that the agreement is that nobody really cares if you wander past the fence, so long as you come back before 10 PM, avoid breaking other rules, respect the navigational equipment, and don't endanger yourself or anyone else.

Lots of pelicans!

The low part of the jetty separating Mission Bay outlet from the river is a form of flood control allowing more of the river to empty out via Mission Bay after a heavy rain. As long as the tide is below ~ 2 feet it's a an easy walk, though gets slick when wet. It is also permeable and as the waves slosh beneath it you can hear the air rushing in and out of the little drainage holes in the barrier.

Back on to high ground.

Out along here you get the feeling of being at the end of the world. Across the way the Mission Beach jetty also boasts great views, but here we have more solitude. Still aching from yesterday we made it not all the way out but enjoyed being where we were watching the waves and being present with our hopes and challenges.

Dog beach on the far right.

The more popular and more legal Mission Beach Jetty

Our shadows grow long

Sun reflected off the buildings

meow

I call this place "Town of Cats" after Murakami's 1Q84 and for the many ferrel cats that live here and subsist off 3 sources: volunteers who feed them every night, scraps from fishers, and decimating the local bird population. The only birds we see along this jetty are pelicans and seagulls who tend to be big enough to fight back. otherwise these predators dominate the ecology. As you walk along you will feel their gazes upon you, and they usually see you before you them. It cannot be the best existence out here and yet it is. I think of it like the ruins of Rome which host a large ferrel cat population of their own. I wonder what particular mix of conditions it takes for cats to take over ? It seems they need human detritus moreover small birds and rodents that consume human detritus. They need human structures, but they also thrive on a certain combination of neglect and attention. The metaphor of this place cannot be ignored, though Haruki Murakami states it far better than myself. They seem sometimes so human and relatable and yet simultaneous so much in their own beings, so alien, as if they hold the key to a whole alternate universe.

Camouflage cat.

I am scratching myself!

You can spend endless time here watching the wildlife, waves and sun; and grow lost, trapped even. We could see nearly all of the basin, from the summits of the Cuyamacas to the peaks of Mission Trails and all up the valley. It is not that large a world really, but it is also its own world. I placed this all in the blog mainly to showcase what the river can be and to draw attention the many expressions found within it, to breathe life into our unique riparian corridor that ties us all together in space and time and shed light on a metaphor.