One distinctive aspect of the experience is actually the smell. San Francisco Bay sometimes emits a strong, fairly sulfuric odor. The smell comes from algae, which live in the bay and give off potent gases at times. The rhythm of those times remains mysterious to me. Sometimes the tap water here smells that way, too, which is generally regarded as a local source of dread. The earth-water smell has kind of grown on me, though. One recent night, while I was recovering from a cold, I surprised myself and found the smell bright and comforting.
The baylands are also a peculiar beauty. I happened to visit the peninsula baylands on my first adventure in the area, after picking up furniture at the Ikea in Palo Alto. I had unwittingly encountered and paid the toll on the way there, and wanting to make more of the trip, stopped at the nature preserve located near the bridge. At first I was unimpressed with it. The baylands are basically swamplands. But unlike the lush Great Swamp north of New York City, the baylands' foliage, like most of the foliage I've encountered in California, is primarily red-brown, with most greens falling closer to gray or olive tones. That, coupled with the local utility structures within visible range, gives the baylands a look I imagined for the post-apocalyptic world. The red-brown foliage also makes the landscape look a little bit Martian. Overall, the look is barren and eerie.
One of the times I was driving over the bridge at night, the moon was full or near full and the bay was clouded with a dusky, orange fog. I don't know what made the fog orange. Maybe it was light, air pollution, or some other atmospheric effect. The sparkle of the water was entirely dulled by the fog, making the bay look more like a crater in the near-distant hills. And the color of the fog was close enough to red-brown that it looked somewhat like unsettled dust. That night, the bridge was a fortified structure, guiding me home after a storm on an alien world.
