Wet and Wild

Today has to have been the first field trip I’ve been on since…9^th grade or so. It was a queer feeling, waiting at the community college for everyone to arrive, to get in the cars together, that cramped, weirdly informal mix of school and socializing that I rarely experience these days. I suppose I must have missed these educational excursions, as I felt an inkling of an old excitement setting off.

I admit I don’t know the other students in my Marine Biology class terribly well. Almost everyone is over 21, with I believe Audrey and I being the only 17-year-olds. Loud Jamie and her yappy dog daemon make everyone more comfortable, along with Jared’s big bear presence (I wonder – how does she fit into that car?!), and for the first time I actually conversed with some of the people who sit around me twice a week. They’ll never be friends, but it was nice to have some interpersonal interactions. Independent Studies combined with those rock wallaby mountains - it makes it hard to talk to people.

Anyway, the morning started here pleasant but mildly cloudy, and as we drove the hour-long ride to the coast it got progressively more overcast, finally beginning to sprinkle. Jamal sat on my lap and wrinkled his nose out the window at the droplets, not speaking but feeling disapproval; we’re both sun-creatures, not meant for wind and rain.

Unfortunately the drizzle turned into that misty, permeable fog of rain that manages to soak everything and everyone to the skin, except the harbor seals, who seemed to be sunbathing at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, here on the California coast. I was wearing rather crappy shoes for tidepooling and kept wheeling my arms to stop myself from slipping on all the algae (Rhodophyta, mostly). Jamal takes his incorporeality seriously and also had difficulty getting around; his clawed, powerful feet are meant for leaping on hot rock hills, not crawling about on slimy, jagged coastal rocks. He splashed in a small tide pool more than once, mockingly disturbing the anemones and hermit crabs.

Despite the wet and chill and my head cold, my mood remained at a pleasant curiosity, though Jam became progressively irritable and quietly peeved, so we headed back to shore after about an hour and a half. Wet through, both with our fur and hair plastered to our bodies, we hunched under Thui’s umbrella and wished the rest of the class would grow disenchanted with the sea stars and seagull shit.

We didn’t get properly dry until all the way home, after showering and cuddling in the clumsy humid warmth of the bathroom. My leg hurts deep in the bone and Jamal looks poofy, like he’s been freshly blow-dried, and Dad is telling me about his 5th-grade field trip to the tidepools when a kid named John Gilstrap pulled a moray eel out of its crevasse with his bare hands.

Badass, Jam says.