So my job is an internship with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in which I grow native aquatic plants. I have to find seeds and rhizomes to grow plants from, and I am limited to finding these plants in coastal regions of the Bay Area. This means I sometimes end up grubbing for seeds in some weird local bodies of water, like San Francisco's drinking water supply in San Bruno, or a reservoir in a flooded redwood forest.

Last week, I had to go kayaking in the ruins of the Sutro Baths, early on a Thursday morning. It's by far the most absurd place I've ever taken a kayak - the swimming pool ruins are filled with fresh water, along with leeches, the rotting corpses of gulls, stray feathers and a whitish, oily algal scum, and one of the species of plants I grow.

The weirdest thing, though, was that almost no one was at the baths to question what the hell I was doing kayaking in the ruins. It's usually throbbing with tourists. One guy said "Be careful out there", as if I was going to take the inflatable sit-on-top kayak out into the ocean. Another person asked if there were any frogs living in Sutro, and a confused tourist wanted to know if she could get to the Golden Gate Bridge by walking through the Sutro cave. But that was it.