The feather plume at the back of his head lifted in a faint breeze. Out there the channel churned its cyclonic eddies counterclockwise. Schools of anchovies, halibut, and sea bass came and went: silver flashes, small storms that well up from the inside of the sea but are short-lived, like lightning. A shifting wind sailed up the beach from the southwest, which means rain. As he walked, sand blasted Sam’s face and ears. Spray from the tops of waves blew backwards into the sea and came up again as whitecaps, and the green shoulders of swells pushed hard toward shore but never seemed to arrive. From the beach I could see the plate-glass windows of my house bulging into wide-angle eyes, and wondered what they could see. A hundred and fifty thousand years ago, southern California turned frosty during two ice ages, beginning a long warming trend that continues today. The sea here was 400 feet lower than it is now: the channel was a mere lagoon, with little surf, and four of the five channel islands were fused together into one large ocean-bound mountain range.
