Notes from Bodega Bay: Part I

“We’re so far away from everything!”

It’s the first day of our Marine Biology Quarter (MBQ) here in alternately sunny and foggy Bodega Bay. The housing isn’t quite what we’d hoped (no internet at the dorms) and we’re way way out on the UC Reserve on a spit of land far away from even the town of Bodega Bay itself (pop. 940), but the research building(s) are right on the coast, and there are deer napping right outside the library windows, so I guess you could say that it isn’t all bad. It seems to be one of those places where you just have to love being in natural surroundings. Don’t get me wrong, the landscape is beautiful out here, if in a bleak kind of way.

We had a couple of orientations about and around the facilities this morning, and unloaded the lab equipment from the vans after lunch, but aside from that we’re free until we meet up with the professors again at 7.30pm. One of our professors looks like Santa Claus, if Santa Claus were perhaps a grubby Vietnam vet. The other one wears his pants very high and has a slight stoop. They’ve been teaching together since 1982 apparently, and I have yet to figure out if this is a good thing or not.

Don’t get me wrong, this quarter will probably be a nice change for me – I am, after all, always complaining about Los Angeles. Still, while thoughts of daily runs along the bay and biking the 1.5 miles to class through pretty coastal scrubland sound idyllic at best, I already feel more isolated than peaceful.

I’m exhausted for no reason. The 5 hours on my new computer battery and the comfy chairs in the library tempt me to stay all afternoon and relax, just like the deer sitting in the scrub outside.