A Day of December In Catalina

by Iolanda Scripca

San Diego

The freeway was empty that time of morning.We jumped in the car with an anticipated giddiness and headed towards Dana Point, California, at about 45 minutes distance from our house. The sun was playing hide-n-seek along the Pacific ocean either blinding us shortly and rhythmically from behind the vacation homes or elongating our shadows into abstract but childish caricatures. Santa Ana winds changed their minds midway; probably exhausted of so much destruction and fires fed by them few weeks ago in the San Diego area.

We boarded the modern Catalina Express, one of the speedboats available in the Southern California harbors such as: Dana Point, Long Beach, San Pedro, Newport Beach and Marina del Rey and said “Good bye” to the so familiar coast which, now, was becoming smaller, faster and faster, in the deafening mixture of sirens, engines, cumulus clouds and the immense blue color of the Pacific in winter. I felt I was in the artistic world of Wyland, in which herds of white horses crash as waves against the rocky Californian coast, in which the beauty of this spherical planet was not only divided into two worlds but also combined into a beautiful poem of Earth and underwater life. 

I jumped off my seat and went out of the cabin so I could “gallop” with playful dolphins and enigmatic whales and to wave to Saint Catherine who, in a blink of the eye, disappeared in a pirate fog so she could get her island ready for the new guests.

I was like in an adventure movie, in the middle of the ocean, where you lose your sense of space and time, where echoes die in frontal collision with the water - in all its physical forms. The majority of the tourists stood up as if in fear of suffocating but ,also, with the curiosity of a child.

Catalina Island was revealing itself in front of us, with a vulnerability of a virgin, like a Jurassic Park of Southern California.

We landed in Avalon harbor, in a small golf with a Mediterranean charm, with endless rows of personal yachts, with yellow submarines in which tourists could visit the sea world through underwater glass windows, where kids of different nationalities fed the orange fish called Garibaldi and where heads of scuba divers startled you popping out in unexpected places.

Seventy-six square miles is the residence of only 3000 permanent inhabitants who use, as their main mean of transportation, the golf carts, one more sophisticated than the other , like bees continuously buzzing up and down the narrow streets full of villas and hotels hooked on the rocky coast. Each building has its own history, from the early 20 th century Casino to the villa of the unfulfilled love.

Every little street was full of appetizing aromas from the Californian-Mexican foods ( a “friendly” combination of lobster tail and Thanksgiving turkey with all its trimmings was surprisingly delicious), to a gourmet pizza, to the excellent Chinese food.

We climbed in a special minivan next to six other people and headed up the hill towards the airpark. The winding road was abruptly taking us away from the tourist center entering the 85% of the natural reservation of the island.

All of a sudden we stopped in the middle of nowhere and one of the passengers, with a face of an adventurer, got down and disappeared like an empty thought among the hills, carrying his backpack. Although in December, the hot sun was patting the center of the island, now, full of black, moving dots.

” These are buffalo, which were introduced on the island in 1924″ , explained the driver. ” Fourteen buffalo were brought for the movie ‘The Vanishing American’ After the project was completed it was decided the buffalo would stay and live on the island.” said the man at the wheel while punching the code at the gate of the airpark.

A silence of biblical beginnings dominated that natural platform. I was the first human being chiseled from wind and sun, with long, blond hair created by feelings of total freedom.

All the worries and pains of the past dissipated like the sand on the runaway at the contact with the wheels of our friend’s airplane. I placed the souvenirs in the back seat next to me and closed my eyes.

Now I was floating between a tired, reddish sun and a pale, crescent moon, with sleepy seagulls at my feet and colorful Christmas lights reflected on my retina from the distance of the little town Avalon. On the horizon a huge, white cruise ship was heading towards the island to stop for the night, on its way to Mexico, carrying thousands of hearts and life stories like a Mirage on a navy blue desert.

I got home accompanied by the urban coyotes’ choir, placed a couple of fire logs in the fire place and sat in front of the two candles that burn continuously in my living room so I could tell them about another adventure of mine.