Sunday Morning Ecology

PHOTO: KCS

On a recent Sunday morning a small white car traveled along West Cliff Drive, a popular and scenic roadway in Santa Cruz that winds along the bluffs overlooking the Monterey Bay. Faint light in a muted purple sky foretold the advancing morning. It was the period of dawn before sunrise when tiny wrens, barely visible, dart among bushes looking for seeds and worms, and crafty raccoons, following a night of scavenging, quietly make their way back home among the cliff rocks and into storm drains.

The pedestrian-bike path that runs along the side of the road was dotted with a few joggers, people walking their dogs and a scattering of surfers toting their boards heading toward the water, dark silhouettes getting a jump on a new day.

The white car hugged the cliff-road at a medium speed, neither too fast nor too slow, hardly noticeable save for a half-opened rear window through which a large dog poked its head, seemingly observing the inland side of the road marked by private residences, cypress trees and an open field where a predator bird perched atop the highest branch, scanning the ground for scooting rodents.

It was just another slowly evolving Sunday morning in Da Cruz.

The car rolled along, winding its way to the end of the road where the entry gate to Natural Bridges State Park had already been opened by a Park Ranger, allowing vehicles access to a circular parking lot with views of the coastline and bay. The white car pulled into the empty lot and parked briefly. The driver, a male bundled in warm clothing, got out of the vehicle and with his iPhone captured a photograph of the rising sun on the horizon. 

Then the car moved on, turning back onto the road, heading easterly in the opposite direction. It found a parking space in a pull-out public lot. The car faced the ocean. The headlights went dark but the radio continued to play, not music but the sound of a man with a British accent speaking in an erudite yet comical manner about ecological awareness.

The driver sat motionless, like a storefront mannequin with eyes fixed on a distant horizon, his head and ears covered with a cap.  He was alone except for the dog, who curled into a comfortable position on a car bed. A seagull cried and waves rolled in. The sea rocked to and fro. A dolphin fanned the water’s surface.

The man lazily shifted his gaze from the ocean to his side view mirror and fell upon a strange and potentially troublesome sight: a black and white police vehicle. He turned the other way, to his right, and was surprised to see a second, large black-and-white.

His small white car was cornered by the police.

A uniformed officer approached him on the driver's side, a second officer stood behind.

"What's going on?" said the officer.

"I'm listening to the radio," the man answered.

"Just you and your dog?"

"That's right."

Faint tension rose from the man's stomach. The situation might have easily been laughed off, after all, he had been here a thousand times before. This was his neighborhood. For years, this had been his Sunday morning ritual. 

"Can I see your license?" said the officer, a young man roughly 20-30 years old.

He presented his California Driver's License.

"We received a call that someone in this car, with your license plate, got out of the car and tagged that sign." 

The man in the car noted the sign, which was smudged with black paint, as if one tag had been painted over another.

"Well, that's not true officer. I don't like tags."

"Can I have your license, please."

The young officer took the man's license and went back to his vehicle while the second officer approached the man.

"Do you live around here?" the second officer asked. He, too, was young.

"Yes, right around the corner. How about you?"

"No, I can't afford to live here, and I wouldn't want to live in the same community where I work," mentioning something about the safety of his children.

"Lift your hands in front of you, palms down," the young officer continued. "Now turn them over." He was looking for signs of spray paint.

The man in the car was Caucasian not Black, yet he considered the possibility if he were, or if he were Latino. How near violence would he be? Would he feel more threatened?  Did he appear to be a gangbanger?

He understood that if he were to show any sign of resistance things could get worse. He could be the victim of mistaken identity.

After a short period during which the man engaged the officer in small talk, the first officer returned and handed over the man's driver license, apparently satisfied.

"The caller had identified the tagger to be 30-years-old. No offense, but you don't look thirty."

The man, in his early seventies, shrugged, amused by the idea of a 74-year-old tagger. But then, he thought, why not, the country suffered a 74-year-old tweeter.

"Sorry for interrupting your morning," said the officer.

"You're just doing your job," the man replied. He caught himself saying, "thank you." 

He was thankful that the neighborhood was being patrolled, especially if gang members were marking boundaries. Yet the protocol seemed overly formal. He found it unfortunate that the officers were not part of the community. He recalled that it wasn't always this way, although even then young officers often seemed overly zealous, oblivious to the greater reality of shared community. It's a tough job, especially since our small town is a destination for recreation with a transient population of day visitors and others who stick around.

The police drove away and he resumed listening to the voice on the radio. We want to control our world, said the voice, yet in reality it is beyond our control. It's not a matter of letting go, it's more like not holding on. 

The man thought about holding on to the past in an ever-changing world, the need to continually adapt, not to be rigid and allow himself to trust his instincts, as if he were riding a wave on a surfboard.

He stepped out of his white vehicle. He let his brindle-colored dog out as well. Having broken a sweat while sitting in the hot seat, he removed his jacket and cap. It was chilly outside. The air smelled fresh. A golden light cast across the pale brown cliffs covered with green ice plant. The dog sniffed the shrubbery.