West Cliff blues: What you can't save, savor

I've been out here for about an hour this afternoon (Wednesday, Feb. 8), walking, breathing the oxygenrich air, indulging my eyes in the views, eavesdropping on pieces of conversations of passing pedestrians, noticing people sitting in their cars in front of the ocean staring at their phones, glimpsing a lone cormorant flashing past inches above sea level.

At the foot of Fair Avenue is the multimillion-dollar “cottage” on the cliff, west of the road, undergoing major renovation for millions more, and even though some 100-year storm will eventually knock it off its privileged perch and sweep it out to sea, the owners need spare no expense because that probably won't happen in their lifetimes.

Most of the rest of the drive will likely outlast most of us enjoying it now, but unlike the Coast Road in Big Sur, which slips down the cliffs or is buried regularly in sliding rocks, West Cliff is not a state highway and is not so readily repaired and requires more local, municipal protection — and Sisyphus can roll his riprap against the bluffs as long as he likes, but the grinding surf will have the last word.

And isn't this why we live here, because the local climate is bigger than we are and yet is mostly benevolent — just look at this springlike day — so we take disasters as part of the deal? There are worse ways to die than to be washed away by a sneaker wave, but I'm in no hurry to do that, so for now I'm on this bench.

I haven't taken many of these walks since I moved, six years ago, closer to downtown, but I remember riding my bike down here first thing most mornings and what a way that was to get the day going. And when my little bungalow was suddenly haunted by incomprehensible illness, I found these shores restorative and one of these benches was all I needed for an office where I could write, and when I looked up, there was Monterey across the bay, as hazily purple as it is today.

So I know why people want to save this street and these cliffs and even those homes on the inland side, and I'm sure they'll stand for a while, but a while beyond that? As Jeffers knew, and Nostradamus too, and every prophet of doom since dear Cassandra, we're doomed, get used to it, because it is a chronic, ongoing, redundant condition, and we continue to endure it as long as we can because we must come to our own rescue as miserable humanity muddles along, and can't go on, yet goes on.

Is it stoical or sentimental to lament our condition as a matter of fact? Should we manage our retreat or stand our ground? I would hide out here in weather like this forever, or as long as it lasts, and not pretend to be able to prevent the inevitable.

When my house halfway to Loma Prieta got knocked sideways by the '89 earthquake with its epicenter in nearby Nisene Marks, I propped it back up and sold it and followed my love to New York City. Our love proved impractical yet endures at a distance, and the house and New York are still standing, but even that rocky island is being swallowed by its own rising ocean, and I would rather be here nostalgic for there than the other way around.

There, I would sit on a bench in Riverside Park and look across the Hudson at the gleaming chemical tanks of New Jersey, and that was beautiful in its way, but I'll take the horizon I'm gazing at today, a rippling range of mountains out there tracing their outline against the sky, and in the foreground, just beyond the beautiful ice plant some people call invasive — and who are humans to make such accusations? — blue-green waves keep rolling in with nobody trying to ride them.

No wonder people want to save this street. Good luck with that. I'm savoring it.

And isn't this why we live here, because the local climate is bigger than we are and yet is mostly benevolent ...?