On our last June Saturday, Daniel and I were driving through San Diego neighborhoods with no aim in particular, weaving up and down old hills with spectacular views and custom houses that alternately look vaguely European and vaguely Cape Cod and definitely modernist, when we took a turn that planted us right in the middle of the Mission San Diego de Alcalá, which, as you'll discover if you google it, is California's First Church.
We actually see it every Sunday off the 8 when we drive to church, and we had thrown out vague aspirations to check it out at some point, but our inadvertent stumbling-upon was the sufficiently serendipitous occasion we needed.
The grounds were well maintained, and the lushness provided a buffer from the city that spread out below the mission's hill.
One of the mission's artifacts: a wine press used for Eucharist for hundreds of years.
This is one of the few places in California where you're confronted with the weight of years that make up human history. As the West Coast Plymouth, San Diego can exhibit at times its three centuries of European colonization. But the Europeans (and South Americans, and Asians, and Africans) themselves often live among millennia of visible civilizations. Our native North Americans left very few traces to remind us of our brevity, and the subsequent urbanization of our area lends a permanency we'd do well to divest ourselves of.
This was our first summer Saturday without our fantastic routine: church distribution, fun activity, philosophy class. After a fairly busy July, we might get back into the first two, but my nerdiness will sorely miss the philosophy class.
The mission was surrounded by paths that wound around the hill.
We took a couple of them.
We later resumed our San Diego exploration, happening upon a street with my name on it—literally. We're not the first Barrs in California, and I'm sure we won't be the last.
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