A Pair of Finches in Carmel

I walked up and down Ocean Street in Carmel by the Sea looking for a place to buy a hot dog but came up empty. You can’t find a hot dog on the side streets either, and that’s too bad. But there is a whole lot else in Carmel to enjoy, arguably far better than a hot dog.

For example, I spent an hour on a bench the other day watching the surfers. To my uneducated eye, they were pretty good, riding the waves and swerving confidently back and forth as they neared the beach. Then the small controlled disaster with the board flying and the surfer sprawling, and it’s all over, nobody got hurt, and they do it again. I’ve seen them shivering beside their vans as they peel off their inch-thick wet suits and pull on their hoodies. Or holding a steaming mug of coffee in both hands and staring glassy-eyed at the waves.

I was sitting on a bench high along the bluffs to watch. Behind me, Scenic Road and the walking path snaked in parallel esses from one end of Carmel Beach to the other, a distance of about a mile. An elderly lady in a reflector vest and volunteer badge was just getting out of a black Mercedes. She opened the trunk and got out an orange reflector vest and put that on and then pulled out a rake and began raking the fine gravel beside the path, making the parallel striations you normally associate with a Japanese garden and that make walking along the seaside paths of Carmel a rare thing.

Then I watched a woman in a red bathing suit emerge from somewhere at the base of the bluff below where I was sitting. Without once breaking stride, she marched into the cold water until the churning waves came to the top of her thighs. Then she dove in.

I considered which of my loved ones would have to be thrashing and in trouble out there before I made the decision to go in after them. I did not come up with an answer.

* * *

Despite the scarcity of hot dogs, everyone wants to live in Carmel. Even former residents, such as Clint Eastwood, the movie actor, keep close ties to this blessed place. Clint is revered. His craggy face is on the cover of a glossy magazine in every shop.

Walk south on Scenic Road and you will eventually arrive at Mission Ranch, which he owns. You can’t miss it. A small herd of sheep are stationed all day on a small pasture out back. You can see them from the road, nibbling the grass until all that’s left is a putting green. Sheep make a nice backdrop in wedding photos, so getting married at Mission Ranch is high on many lists. There’s a well-known bar and restaurant, and a rumour is always swirling in town about whether Clint is visiting this weekend or next. Surprisingly, a room at Mission Ranch costs less than you’d expect: less than a good steak dinner at the best steak house in Carmel.

Another thing about Carmel: you’ll see any number of people pushing baby strollers along the bumpy roads, and in pretty much every stroller there is a dog. Folks pedal bikes with old-fashioned sidecars in which dogs sit, tongues hanging out like wet laundry. Then after a while you realize what it is about Carmel by the Sea. Why, despite the scarcity of hot dogs, everyone wants to live here including me. It has no shadows.

A month ago we were in Nashville, Tennessee. I know it’s not fair to switch gears so abruptly, and maybe I’ll write about Nashville next time. But what I really wanted to write about today was not so much about Clint and his sheep, or about the surfers with their mugs of hot coffee and the woman in the red swimsuit slicing the icy waters or even about the elderly lady in a reflector vest forever raking the fine gravel on a bluff high above the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean.

What I really wanted to write about today was an incident a couple of days before we boarded our plane for Nashville a month ago. I was just starting to gather and pack, and as I walked through our dining room I glanced through the patio doors and saw two small shadowy shapes on our back deck. I went outside for a better look. A pair of finches were lying next to each other beside one of the clear glass panels that enclose the deck. They looked clean and new and beautiful but lying still and unmarked except for their broken necks.

It took some time to decide what to do. Then I got a pair of work gloves out of the garage and picked up the finches and set them at the base of a tree in a wild patch at a corner of our backyard.

Weeks later, on our flight to San Francisco and from there to Carmel, it struck me: Why did I decide to wear gloves?