The flight back from California involved brief stops in Seattle and Ketchikan. Winds buffeted our plane while it landed in both airports. I barely noticed the bumps as we approached Seattle. But, as the pilot warned on our approach to Ketchikan, high winds streaking down that Alaska town’s runway were going to make the landing “a little rough.” 

            The pilot’s warning didn’t discourage me. I was more than ready to be home with Aki. It didn’t matter that Aki’s other human and I had we just left a sunny coastal town where each morning I could ride a bicycle every morning past breaking waves and sleeping seals. I missed the little dog and the rest of our rain forest family. I was also tired of the crowds drawn by sunshine and beauty to the California coast. 

            As I do during after the pilot begins the “gradual descent” of the plane to an Southeast Alaska airport, on the approach to Ketchikan I remind myself that I was more likely to be killed in my California rental car than in this airplane.  Closing my eyes, I thought of Gastineau Channel on a calm day where the oversized dorsal fin of a male killer whale or the flukes of a diving humpback whale might be seen. The jerking motion of the plane shook those thoughts from my mind. As the plane bounced down out of the clouds and over standing waves on Tongass Narrows, I closed my eyes and waited for the plane’s wheels to slam onto the tarmac.  It did and then shimmed down the runway until the brakes finally slowed momentum. Even after the plane stopped and a flight attendance welcomed us to beautiful Ketchikan, high winds rocked the plane like a cradle. 

Wolves make Aki nervous. If here with me on California’s central coast, the little dog might have refused to join me on this hike across Point Lobos. I won’t see any wolves while exploring the point. But there will be seals and sea otters.

After walking through spare woods, I reach an area of coves and islands. Generations of cormorants have whitened bare cliffs above a sea otter bay. They seem to watch a family of otters ride up and down on the swells. Around the corner a couple of Canada geese have positioned themselves near a bench where hikers like to lunch. What ever happened to the once wild birds?

I ignore the honking geese and move on to where I can look into a protected cove where an adult otter is teaching its young one to swim. The baby, looking like a big puppy, tries to cling to mom. Each time the mom pushes her baby away. Finally they face each other, tails straight down. The mother breaks off the embrace, forcing the baby to work out how to swim on its own.

It’s still sunny as I wind down Pacific Grove streets to the beach at Asilomar. Sunlight shines off the coats of two very tame deer eating ice plant near the road. Living here has taught them to ignore men on two wheels. They have never been prey, just potential victims of one of the autos processing along the beach.

I ride past the deer and over to an ocean overlook. The high surf makes me wonder how anything could live in these coastal waters. But my visit yesterday to the Monterey Aquarium provided proof of a rich marine environment.

The chilling wind is familiar, but not the huge waves. Aki wouldn’t like it here. She wouldn’t even bother to watch the turkey vultures hovering as if on strings in the wind or the seals asleep on the beach , doing great imitations of rounded rocks.

The little dog is back home in Juneau. I am standing above a Monterey California beach, trying to shelter behind a cypress tree.