Bird Line

The other day I was driving back from yoga class along Coast Highway. The crazy traffic of Laguna Beach in summer had given way to the relatively open road, but above me, the sky was filled with a perfectly aligned queue of pelicans, just above and to the left of my car, flying along the shoreline. I wish I could have taken a picture, but you'll just have to trust me when I say that they flew along with me for miles, not in the famed V formation of flocking birds, but in a clothesline of big brown pelicans, slightly staggered, but not a feather out of place, as orderly as the quiet breakers on the sand.