TheBanyanTree: Whales could breach

[Mike Pingleton]

Minus one degree Fahrenheit on the car thermometer this morning on the
way to catch the westbound redeye at the airport.  Snow on the ground
over Illinois, snow on the ground over Missouri and Oklahoma, snow on
the ground, snow on the ground and I nodded off.  I woke up over the
Grand Canyon and the snow was gone.  Off I went again into a dream
about a jungle and the flaps woke me up with the noise they make when
they are lowered to make the plane land, over green San Diego.

After checking into my hotel I got back in the rental car and drove
straight to Torrey Pines park, where I sat on a promontory over the
ocean in the lush luxury of seventy five degrees Fahrenheit.  I sat
with my eyes closed to the dipping sun and let a star permeate my
eyelids and paint my optic nerves with orange fire.  Whales could have
breached, dolphins could have sprouted wings for all I knew in my
thermoregulatory stupor.  I sat until the sea cut a chord across the
sun.  To do otherwise, to waste such an opportunity would be
unthinkable.  I stood up when the sun threw a ribbon of fire across
the sea at me.   Then I opened my eyes and looked for spouting whales
and flying dolphins.