There’s another story my dad always told when I was a kid. One of adventure, waves, and saving grace.
He called it “Stuck Cove,” and like all his stories, it began with five simple words.
~
A long, long time ago…
Dave and I had gone hiking down near the Cliff House—farther south than anyone knew.
Everyone thought we were up by the Presidio, but we’d wandered miles down the beach, where the granite arms of the headlands reach into the Pacific.
Each cove looked the same—dark green water, jagged rock, gulls wheeling overhead.
We’d climb one outcrop, slide down the other side, and keep walking. The rule was simple: if you can go up, you can go down.
We didn’t realize the rule didn’t work both ways.
Near sunset, we crossed one last rock face into a narrow cove and decided to turn back.
That’s when we realized it—no way up.
To both sides, slick granite arms walled us in. The tide was still high but retreating, the surf loud and cold.
Behind us, a cliff rose twenty or thirty feet straight up.
We were trapped.
So we sat and waited. The sun dropped lower; the waves pulled out, then pushed back in.
For a brief moment, the water receded so far we saw sand—a sliver of escape.
We stood, ready to sprint. Then the next wave came, higher than before, and the opening vanished.
It never came again.
For a while we thought about trying anyway—wading or swimming out, making a break for it.
The ocean looked deceptively calm between sets, like it might let us through if we timed it right. But when it broke, it broke so hard, and then something in the way the water pulled—heavy, relentless—told us we’d never make it.
Our only way out was up.
We started to climb.
The rock broke under our hands, sharp and brittle like shale.
Every grip crumbled.
Halfway up, Dave’s footing slipped, and he fell—but caught a ledge wide enough for his fingertips.
He hung there, breath gone, until he somehow pulled himself back.
I followed, both of us scraping and clawing for progress.
At the top, we rolled onto the sand, bleeding and shaking. A small wooden sign stood there, weathered and half-buried in the sand.
DANGER—UNDERTOW!
We lay there a long time, staring at that sign, so happy we had not tried to go out through the water.
~
That fall—when I was a kid, there was an angel.
When my dad told it last, standing with me atop the de Young overlook on my thirtieth birthday, the story had changed.
I waited, for the rest of it—for the part where an angel caught him, but he never added it.
“We were young and stupid then.”
He smiled.
“But we made it.”