"Kim Stanley Robinson - Forty Signs of Rain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

looked that interesting. Sometimes it happened that way.

After that there was an hour and a half to go before his meeting with Derek. Parking at UCSD was a
nightmare, but he had gotten a pass to a department slot from Rosaria, and Torrey Pines was only a few
hundred yards up the road, so he decided to walk. Then, feeling restless, and even a bit jumpy, it
occurred to him to take the climbersтАЩ route that he and some friends had devised for a kind of run/climb
workout, when they were all living at Revelle; that would nicely occupy the amount of time he had to kill.
 It involved walking down La Jolla Shores and turning onto La Jolla Farms Road and heading out onto
the bluff of land owned by the universityтАФa squarish plateau between two canyons running down to the
beach, ending in a steep three-hundred-and-fifty-foot cliff over the sea. This land had been left in its
natural state, more or lessтАФthere were some old World War Two bunkers melting away on itтАФand as
they had found seven-thousand-year-old graves on it, likely to stay forever protected in the UC Natural
Reserve system. A superb prospect and one of FrankтАЩs favorite places on Earth. He had lived on it,
sleeping out there every night and using the old gym as his bathroom; he had had romantic encounters out
there; and he had often dropped down the steep surferтАЩs trail that descended to the beach right at Blacks
Canyon.

When he got to the cliffтАЩs edge he found a sign announcing that the route down was closed due to
erosion of the cliff, and it was hard to argue, as the old trail was now a kind of gully down the edge of a
sandstone buttress. But he still wanted to do it, and he strolled south along the cliffтАЩs edge, looking out at
the Pacific and feeling the onshore wind blow through him. The view was just as mind-boggling as ever,
despite the gray cloud layer; as often happened, the clouds seemed to accentuate the great distances to
the horizon, the two plates of ocean and sky converging at such a very slight angle toward each other.
California, the edge of historyтАФit was a stupid idea, and totally untrue in all senses of the word, except
for this physical one, and the reach beyond to a metaphorical landscape: it did appear to be the edge of
something.

An awesome spot. And the tighter, steeper canyon on the south side of the empty bluff had an
alternative trail down that Frank was willing to break the rules and take. No one but a few cronies of his
had ever used this one, because the initial drop was a scarily exposed knife-edge of a buttress, the gritty
sandstone eroding in the wind to steep gullies on both sides. The drop into the gully to the left was
similarly hairy. The trick was to descend fast and boldly and so Frank did that, skidding out as he turned
into the gully, and sliding onto his side and down; but against the other wall of the gully he stopped, and
was able to hop down after that very quickly and uneventfully.

Down to the salt roar of the beach, the surf louder here because of the tall cliff leaping up from the back
of the beach. He walked north down the strand, enjoying yet another familiar place. Blacks Beach, the
UCSD surfersтАЩ home away from home.

The ascent to Torrey Pines Generique reversed the problems of the descent, in that here all the problems
were right down on the beach. A hanging gully dripped over a hard sill some forty feet up, and he had to
free climb the grit to the right of the green algal spill; then just scramble up that gully, to the clifftop near
the hang-glider port. At the top he discovered a sign that declared this climb too had been illegal.

Oh well. He had loved it. He felt refreshed, awake for the first time in weeks somehow. This was what it
meant to be home. He could brush his hands through his slightly sweaty and seaspray-dampened hair,
and walk in and see what happened.