On the coast last week, I stopped at the Chart House in Montara to have a look. It appears closed. I’d never seen the beach just below it.

“Jeepers creepers, where’d you get those peepers?

Jeepers creepers, where’d you get those eyes?

Gosh all git-up, how’d you get so lit up?

Gosh all git up, how’d it get that size?…”

-Song written in 1938 by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer

Only 4 of my Tuesday night running friends showed up in the heavy downpour last night. They took off up the valley, and I dressed in head-to-toe rain gear, with Muck Boots, and headed for the beach. Wow! Wind felt like 40-50mph, driving rain in from the ocean. You know how raindrops might be as big in circumference as say a pea, well, these were the size of cherries. I couldn’t look directly at the churning ocean, I needed swimming goggles. I was in the eye of the storm. Foam from waves was skidding along on the sand. The creek (of the estero) was pounding, sluicing out to the ocean. Good to be alive.

   I was struck by the power of the natural world. Maybe the earth IS a living entity, and these worldwide catastrophes are the planet reacting to shoddy treatment by humanoids. Whatever…

   The rain is better late than never. The soil in the woods and on the hills is moist and fragrant. Gonna be a lush Spring…

   I’m in North Beach in San Francisco right now. BB King was playing Stormy Monday as I drove in along the coast in the pre-dawn darkness.

  I’m excited to be doing a Tiny Homes slide show tonight at City Lights, a still vital and relevant independent bookstore.

I could swear this guy had an abalone on his belly and was hammering it with a rock. Floating around just outside the wave zone, livin the good life…

“The sea otter is a secondary consumer and feeds on animals such as sea urchins, clams, mussels, mollusks, abalone, snails, crustaceans, small fish, etc. A fully grown sea otter can eat over 25% of its own body weight.”