And It's Tuesday (and I lost Monday)

I've been thinking of walking in the mysterious footpaths and byways of San Diego .

I had a friend who lived near a footbridge that has become quite famous and has even been shored up to keep it going and has made the papers. It was off First and went west to a really incredible batch of houses...My kids and I used to park over there and walk over and back just for the thrill of it. And there was at that time (70's) another one nearby there, less imposing, but just as interesting.

When I'd walk in Mission Hills, I'd walk at night (early evening) and really enjoyed my hour or so out on the sidewalks of the neighborhood. I discovered oddities  too, as well as houses where the same four oldsters played cards in a window behind a semi-screen of cannas every evening, houses where there was never any sign of life beyond a vague blue flicker of light from a television screen, huge houses with every light on and you knew that a family of kids lived there...and I found a sidewalk that wandered along the edge of a mini-canyon with houses facing on it, that came out on another street--and you'd never have known it existed, in a car. Fascinating San Diego.

And there were the foxes.  To walk at night in San Diego was to know our neighbors, the ones who inhabited the great, sighing dark canyons that paralelled our civilized streets.  They might have been coyotes, but I believe that they were real foxes.  We'd meet unexpectly, bow, and part in mutual respect.  There were lots of them.  One night, and I would attest to this, I saw two foxes trotting slowly before me..and as I got closer I saw that the two were supporting another fox between them as they disappeared into some bushes.  I felt at the time that they were moving from one canyon spot to another,(we were between great rainstorms that winter), had to use the street to get into it, and were taking along grandma. Nice of them, really.

One afternoon I was standing in my back yard (canyon) and looked to the east where there was a big hill, warm and pleasant in the afternoon sun.  I couldn't believe my eyes as a fox appeared in broad daylight on the hill, made his round-and-round circle of a nest in the tall dry grass, and lay down for a warm nap.  I believe that that was the only time I ever sighted one in daylight.  You wouldn't have wanted to meet one in daylight because that would have meant he was ill probably.  Sometimes in the big Santa Anas, they'd get needy for water, and that is when I'd  put a big tub  a number of yards down the canyon and fill it with water from the hose, from above.  They needed it.

When I came back from my sojourn in Texas, I'd go to Mission Hills to walk in the evenings but that sense of solitude and invisibility never returned. People had established automatic sensor lights on the fronts of their houses, and instead of skulking by in peace and privacy, you got "lit up," and had to hurry on in search of shadows.

Life was good, in San Diego. And beautiful. YAZZYBEL