Sea Lions, La Jolla CA

I am preparing this early as we (Carol and I) are catching a plane at 6 am tomorrow for Santa Fe to visit our daughter Anna. Anna started grad school in Art Therapy this semester.

As I have mentioned before, I really enjoy the cove at La Jolla, between the Harbor Seal pupping beach at one end, and the Sea Lion colony at the other. The Sea Lions, in particular, seem apt to pose. I assume they are sunning themselves, with stretched necks and heads in the air.

Sony HX400V at 588mm equivalent field of view. 1/320th @ ISO 80 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom.

In my rounds as the ZEISS Birding Specialist I get to visit places like San Diego once a year, always the same month, and often the same weeks each year. I get attached to places like the Cove at La Jolla. I can get there without a GPS if I have to…and I even know the better routes depending on the time of day. I don’t rank as a native…though I doubt very much there are many native La Jollians…but I am certainly familiar with the place, and I miss it those years when my San Diego trip somehow does not leave me a few hours for the drive from Mission Bay and Marina Village Conference Center where the San Diego Birding Festival is held each year, up the coast to the cove. I could watch and photograph the families of seals and Sea Lions every year, for untold years…and I always look forward to the breeding plumaged Cormorants and Pelicans. I feel incredibly privileged…blessed outright…to be able to claim such far flung places as La Jolla as part of my home country…of the country where I feel at home. The spirit knows no physical boundaries of course, and wherever there is beauty and vivid life to nurture it…it is there we can call home. I look forward to being at home in La Jolla next year…and at home in Sante Fe this coming week. Home is way of seeing, a way of extending the spirit to the place…of drawing comfort and nourishment from the the place. Wherever we are. Happy Sunday! And welcome home.