Squirrel-in-Residence at Chace Park

As the heat continues, I occasionally seek the cool ocean breezes of Burton W. Chace Park in Marina Del Rey. I say occasionally because, on weekends, the park is being loved to death and the parking lots are all parked up. Yesterday, I sat down in the shade at the edge of the Marina while reading Paul Theroux’s The Last Train to Zona Verde (2013).

The squirrel pictured above approached me nonchalantly as I waited for my 90-minte free parking window to expire. The peninsula seems to have scores of squirrels all busily hunting nuts, seeds, insects, and food scraps.

Shade Trees at Chace Park

En route to the park, I had stopped at Ralph’s Supermarket at Mindanao Way and Admiralty, where I picked up a tasty salmon and tuna poke bowl and a can of Japanese iced green tea. I consumed it at one of the three roofed picnic pavilions seen in the distance of the above photo. Then I sat in one of the stone benches with a good view of boat traffic and relaxed while the breeze ruffled my hair.

Sailboat in the Marina

I returned home, where the temperature was about 8 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) warmer and cooked stuffed peppers for dinner. Afterwards, I relaxed for an evening of Roger Corman Poe films starring Vincent Price on the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) channel.

Whenever the summer heat of Los Angeles becomes too unbearable, I pick up the book I am reading and head to my magic peninsula, Burton Chace Park, which is surrounded on three sides by the boats in Marina Del Rey.

There is a Hungarian expression from my youth that aptly describes this week’s weather: dög meleg, or, in English, damned hot. Although the temperature has been in the low 80s Fahrenheit, the humidity has generally been over 50%, and there has been no cooling breeze.

Even when the area even a few hundred feet inland is like a blast furnace, there, for some reason, always a cooling sea breeze blowing at Chace Park. Unfortunately, the secret is out, especially on the weekends. Even if it can get crowded, it’s always nice to have a respite from the dög meleg.

The title of this post comes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”:

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free:
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.