Hard and Soft Edges in San Diego

Melissa & Mike Bishop. Notice Mike’s t-shirt, worn in honor of our arrival!

We landed safely in San Diego yesterday and are being wonderfully hosted by Mike and Melissa Bishop — they send warm greetings to the Chapel Hill Meeting and CFS Communities in North Carolina.

Despite a bit of jet lag, Mike and I toured bits and pieces of San Diego today. I (Marsha) was struck by different sorts of edges we found.

Our first stop today was to the edge of the Pacific Ocean, which was unexpectedly (for us) shrouded in fog, making for a very indistinct edge of the U.S.A. Shortly after that, we drove just a few miles down the highway to the International Border State Park, where we could see with stark clarity the hard-edged wire and cement fences of the border between the U.S. and Tijuana, Mexico.  While recognizing how harsh it looked, I also recognized that in the long run of history, fortified borders are nothing new.

On a lighter note, we also discovered some unexpected immigration in the area. At the Tijuana River Visitor Center (on the U.S. side of the border) we walked out into a lovely, marshy, conservation area and spotted a yellow-crowned night heron, listed in our bird app as a migratory bird. When we reported the sighting to the park ranger, she told us that after Hurricane Katrina, a pair of yellow-crowned night herons showed up in the marsh, and there’s been a steady population ever since. It’s nice to know that birds don’t have to worry about borders, and are free to adapt to the circumstances they find themselves in. And so the population of the world keeps shifting and adapting, including us!

Next stop, Big Island, Hawaii.