In the Beginning

San Francisco, CA

July 16, 2018

God said: Let the waters that are under the heaven, be gathered together into one place: and let the dry land appear. And it was so done

-Genesis 1:9

It was done…but it was not finished. 

From the flat dry land of the Pliocene plain, the western Sierra began to rise like a trapdoor, its abrupt eastern escarpment resembling a sea-wave about to break upon what is now Nevada.

Till then, which geologically was about last Tuesday, big rivers ran unimpeded across the plain to an ocean washing rocks hundreds of miles east of where waves now crash.

From the depths of that ocean rose, and is still rising, by subduction and transverse churn, the marine medley of the Coast Range.

Among the peaks of that range were the heights of modern Alcatraz, Yerba Buena, and Angel Islands, each ascending from the floor of the deepest valley along the new coast.

Between the Sierra granite and the seismic litter of the Coast Range mélange lies the Great Central Valley, providing California a profile akin to that of the Apennines, Po Plain, and Alps which separates Genoa from Zurich.

As Holocene glaciers melted a few geologic moments ago, run-off and rising seas filled the low Coast Range basin, turning its hills into the islands that now dot the newly formed estuary. 

That basin, comprising the Suisun, San Pablo, and San Francisco Bays, is fed by the dual-delta of the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers…a topographic anomaly replicated by the Tigris and Euphrates, the Ganges and Brahmaputra, the Kennebec and Androscoggin.

From that delta, to those bays, and thru the strait named to recall the Golden Horn of Byzantium, flows water that, with the great ocean it feeds, surrounds a peninsula acting as the mast on the prow, the freshest acquisition, of the North American plate.

From where I now sit at the tip of that peninsula, and scattered southward across the sand dunes on which the present City was built, was the native Ohlone tribe, separated by the Golden Gate from their Miwok neighbors to the north.

These relatively peaceful peoples, and the harbor they surrounded, remained shielded from acquisitive Europeans by the treacherous currents and thick fogs that give San Francisco the coolest mean summer temperature of any US city outside Alaska. 

The natives and their bay, thus veiled, were undetected by missionary, mariner, and miner for the first couple centuries of Spanish, English, and Russian exploration.

Juan Cabrillo flew Spain’s colors on several 16th century coastal expeditions from San Diego Bay to the Russian River…and a few decades later Sir Francis Drake anchored The Golden Hinde in what is now Drakes Bay at the base of Mt Tamalpais, naming and claiming Nova Albion for the English realm.

Neither the Little Goat nor the Sea Dog noticed the great Bay around which eight million people now pay an average of over $1M for homes less spacious than the galleon holds in which their harried crews rested their weary heads.

David and I are staying this week in one of those homes, albeit a bit larger and more luxurious than a plank on an Elizabethan square-rig. 

It is that of Ken Miller…whom I met, among a host of other lifelong friends, almost three decades ago when I initially lived in San Francisco. 

Ken was a groomsman in our wedding, is godfather to both our sons, and remains one of the more reliable friends we could hope to have.

It was a friendship born in the foxhole. 

Some men recount or repress the storming of Omaha Beach, the retreat from Moscow, or the memory of an amputated limb on the banks of Antietam creek…when only a bitten bullet could anesthetize the pain. 

Ken and I were conservative Catholic Republicans in San Francisco. Many was the occasion we would have welcomed a bullet to anesthetize (or end) the pain.

You think the Donner Party had it rough? What if they had made it thru the the passes and drifts only to learn they’d be tasked with helping manage Bruce Herschensohn’s 1992 San Francisco campaign to prevent Barbara Boxer from reaching the U.S. Senate? 

The same year, I essentially led Pat Buchanan’s Bay Area office in the California Presidential Primary. For that I was despised not only by every San Francisco Democrat…but all three local Republicans also nervously lowered their eyes or crossed the street whenever I approached.

That, however, was long ago…when three Republicans could still be found in San Francisco. 

A quarter century on, I still relish returns to this unique place, my adopted home town. 

I write now with the Presidio Gate to our west, a view of the Palace of the Fine Arts to our north, the Golden Gate and Marin hills just beyond, and I recall like yesterday living on Telegraph Hill, in the Outer Richmond, and in the nearby Marina District…strolling these streets, climbing up and down these hills, frequenting boulangeries as the sun rose and fog receded, patronizing bistros as the fog returned and sun set. 

And I remember how fortunate I felt to call this place home.

For this week, thanks to Brett and Jennifer, I am able to do so again. David and I, like an advance party for a Royal visit, arrived a few days ahead of Rita and Alexander, to assess the situation and secure the grounds. 

More to come on what we have seen…but for now, we’ve gotten ahead of ourselves. Let’s return to the early innings of the initial Spanish bull market in Alta California.

From the day Francis Drake put his toes in sand at Point Reyes, almost two centuries would pass before José Ortega, chief scout of the overland Portola expedition, became the first European to view San Francisco Bay. 

Six years later, Juan Manuel de Ayala would not miss the Golden Gate, claiming honors as first to sail thru it…initially anchoring the San Carlosnear what is now Sausalito, eventually making port on an island his expedition named for the Angels, in a cove posterity would eventually name for him. 

The following year, Juan Bautista de Anza culminated an 800 mile expedition from the Arizona desert by erecting two crosses, five miles apart, on the south side of the newly discovered strait. 

One marked the location of a fort to flaunt and flex military muscle, the other of a Mission to offer and obtain supernatural solace. 

Between the two, beside a small cove at the northeast edge of the windswept peninsula, José Moraga selected a site to construct shacks for those who would build The Presidio and erect the Mission San Francisco de Asís. 

On that spot, in our time, those huts would fetch seven figures, offer access to more restaurants than Charles Lindbergh in Paris, and be surrounded by far too many homeless.

Only the homeless, and not much else, were there then. In fact, all were homeless…and so building commenced.

The ramshackle outpost was named Yerba Buena, for the ubiquitous native herb that surrounded the new settlement.

Seven days after De Anza’s cross established Mission Delores…and founded San Francisco…the Declaration of Independence was formally adopted.

Few in Yerba Buena could have cared less…yet.

JD