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Avast, ye scurvy landlubbers!
I made it safely back from China with no further incidents! Is it a matter of coincidence or a stroke of great good fortune that just a few days after setting foot once again on American soil, I am once again off it? This time, however, I am not sailing the currents of the air but the currents of the sea aboard the Catalina Express, en route to the sunny beaches of Avalon for the 2011 Flying Fish Festival!
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For those who have not sailed off the California coast much, Santa Catalina is the largest of the Channel Islands, about an hour’s voyage from Long Beach. Avalon is a tiny town on the southwest corner, which was designed as a tourist attraction from the get-go in the 1880s. It burned down once, then rose again to become a beautiful strip of sand surrounded by the most perfectly blue water I’ve ever seen outside the Caribbean.
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Nestled snugly within this blue water are hundreds of flying fish! Every summer, the flying fish come to Catalina to make baby flying fish in the kelp beds, and every weekend after Memorial Day, the town of Avalon holds a four-day celebration to honor the piscine pilots. What a wonderful thing to see fish fly! Maybe George came to see their aerobatic antics!
When I arrived, the events were just getting started. There was a boat-building competition underway, in which several teams had three hours to build a sea-worthy boat from the materials provided and somehow incorporate a swimming noodle into the design! There were booths highlighting the nifty merchandise of the local shops and restaurants, and there were street performers! One fellow, named Alex Clark, perched atop a ladder, held in place by four volunteers with ropes. While perched up there, he started juggling daggers! He had so much practice with juggling that he was able to juggle three ping pong balls using only his mouth! It was very impressive; I wonder how he would do at the Dreamlike Lijiang show…
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I was surprised by how little was going on around the Festival, so I started wandering around town. It just so happens that Avalon is home to two famous landmarks, the S.S. Catalina, which has sadly been destroyed, and the Tuna Club. While the name “Tuna Club” makes me think of C.M. Coolidge’s Dogs Playing Poker with a fishy twist, the Tuna Club was actually the birthplace of sport fishing! Members of this club were the first to land tuna, marlin, and swordfish with a rod and reel, but they did it nobly, setting rules to assure the fish a sporting chance and make it a true contest of might!
See, the founder, Mr. Charles Holder (whose modern avatar I met outside the club!) came to Catalina in the 1880s and saw how wasteful the people were with their handlines, hauling in giant tuna after giant tuna and letting them just sit there and rot. So, he decided to switch to rod and reel, and after many disastrous attempts, during which his boatman, “Mexican Joe” coined the name “tuna,” a new sport was born. Today, the club is still quite active, but unfortunately for timing, they only give tours once a year in August. I might have to go back!
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I wandered up the sloping, Mediterranean streets and staircases around Avalon to take in the view of the harbor. Below stood the Catalina Island Casino, a massive work of 1920s art deco design, which wasn’t really a casino for very long before becoming a place for general entertainment, dancing and the like. Now, it contains an enormous movie theater and a ballroom. There were no fancy balls thrown tonight, but the casino is still quite extraordinary to see from the outside.
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It was getting late in the afternoon, so I decided it would be wise to pitch the tent. Hermit’s Gulch Campground was the closest location to reach on foot, about a mile inland, but even being near the road, on this island, it felt pretty remote! It took me a while to set up the tent. The ground was kind of hard and I’d forgotten a hammer, but finally, after great struggle, there was triumph!
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From here, I was able to take a quick hop over to the Wrigley Memorial and Garden, a beautiful place showcasing the indigenous plant life, such as the rare Catalina mahogany (Cercocarpus traskiae). There are only seven of these shrubs known to exist in the wild! But I digress with my heart for horticulture. The gardens and memorial were constructed to pay homage to chewing gum master, William Wrigley, who took ownership of Catalina Island in 1919 and made it his priority to ensure that the island would still be beautiful for future generations. The building that embodies this mission is seated high on a hill overlooking Avalon Harbor. The view is truly spectacular.
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The sunset brought me back to the harbor in time to see the band known as the Xceptional Music Company. Their assignment tonight was to pay tribute to Country Rock. And they rocked! Some of their songs sounded just like the originals, but there were a few with twists that made my mouth hang open. They did a rendition of The Devil Went Down to Georgia which replaced Johnny with their old man violinist, “Caveman.” See, in this version, the Devil wasn’t going to admit being beaten by a fiddle alone. Oh no, the Devil wanted Caveman to play all the instruments in the whole band: fiddle, guitar, bass, keyboard, and drums! And he did! I sure would have laid that golden fiddle on the ground at Caveman’s feet, believe you me! Oh, and if I might add, I have never heard a more high-spirited, trippy, rocking take on Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” in my life! I was having so much fun, and the crowd was dancing so delightfully that I nearly missed the boat, but I was not going to let that happen!
What drew me to the Flying Fish Festival to begin with was the opportunity to see flying fish live up to their name. To do this, I needed a ticket aboard a Discovery Tours boat (fortunately not China Discovery Tours). Equipped with a World War I era searchlight, this boat cruised us out into the pitch black harbor to show us the origin of the festival’s name. Overhead, every star within light-years shone in a crystal tapestry that I so miss in Los Angeles. What I thought were stars reflected on the water were actually bioluminescent diatoms, which sparkled as the boat passed and surrounded us with glitter!
Then, in the spotlight, I saw what looked like a seagull coasting over the water. Only, this seagull had a tail, and scales, and gills. It was an honest-to-gosh flying fish! The searchlight had spooked it right out of the water! It sailed for at least 200 feet until it disappeared into the glittering waves. In an hour, the light brought out at least twenty amazing flyers, but only nineteen lived to tell the tale. One flew a little too slowly, and as it came down toward the surface of the water, a big ol’ sea lion hopped out of the ocean, grabbed it, and splashed back down! How amazing is that?!
Still giddy from a dream come true, I stumbled back along the road to the campsite, alone in the pitch black. Every so often, a golf cart would come by, but otherwise, it was just me and the crickets. The nice thing about Catalina is that there are no large land predators, and the people here are mostly just looking for a good time. So, relying on instinct, rather than the senses, I arrived safely back at the tent, fended off a few curious deer, and waved to a shy Catalina Island fox before drifting into a delicious sleep under the stars.
Flight on!
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