NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:

Falling on concrete rubble is no picnic.

It was Valentine’s Day when it happened. I was looking forward to a pleasant dinner with Lou at one of our favorite local restaurants. In the morning she had gone off to Crystal Cove State Park to install native plants with her work crew from the Orange County Conservation Corps. I had made dinner reservations for 6 p.m.

About 3 p.m., I got a phone call from Lou. She told me in carefully measured words that she had fallen and hit her head. She insisted she was all right despite falling down a short cliff and landing on a pile of concrete rubble that had given her a gash on her scalp down to the bone.

I hurried off to meet her at the Hoag Hospital Urgent Care Center in Fountain Valley. When she finally saw a doctor there, he sent her to the Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian emergency room in Newport Beach with a recommendation that she have a CAT scan because, besides the still-bleeding gash, she had concussion symptoms.

Once we got to the emergency room, they ushered her in rather quickly. In fact, she got faster service than I have ever seen for anyone in the emergency room. I think it was the bandage. A few swaths of gauze looped around the top of her head made her look one of the walking wounded Civil War soldiers in “Gone with the Wind.”

She got a thorough examination immediately. They decided she didn’t have a concussion, which was good news. While we waited for someone to irrigate the wound and stitch her up, she told me more of her story. Her corps members were installing coastal sage scrub plants along a cliff face under her supervision and that of Javier Cabrera, the corps orientation supervisor, and Dominic Herrera, a recently hired State Parks biologist.

Dominic was extremely pleased with the work ethic and care with which the corps members put the plants in the ground. He told Lou that a previous crew, from a different agency, had worked in really slap-dash fashion. As Lou and her students worked, they could see several adult bottlenose dolphins in the waves below, along with two much smaller individuals that appeared to be nursing from the adults. They took a break in late morning to hike down to the beach, where they observed the dolphins from about 15 feet away. They also explored the tide pools and saw young sea lions in the surf.

After a picnic lunch on the beach, they resumed planting. They finished their work early, so they took another walk on the beach. They were about to head back up the walkway when one of the corps members spied a dead sea lion near the high tide line. They all gathered around the body while Lou pointed out various anatomical features of the badly decomposed sea lion.

At that point, they were nearly directly below their vehicles. The corps members scrambled up the steep embankment instead of doubling back to take the path. Lou tried to follow up the pile of huge concrete blocks and sand. That’s when she had her accident.

Not surprisingly, the corps members were terrified at what they saw. One muscular young man, covered in gang tattoos, nearly broke into tears, saying to Lou, “I never really had a mother. I don’t want to lose you, too.” It’s amazing how quickly these young corps members bond with Lou.

The kids helped Lou to her feet. Two of them — Jessica Perez and “Henry” Enrique Guerrero — walked her back the long way up the path, holding on to her arms even though she insisted she was fine. Dominic called the lifeguards. These fellows checked Lou out as thoroughly as they could, called the medical facility to let them know Lou was on her way in, and then — at her insistence — allowed her to drive away in her car. One of the corps members, Michael Carr, put a plastic bag over the car’s headrest so she wouldn’t get blood on the upholstery.

After our long wait in the ER, a nice physicians assistant came in and put some steel staples into Lou’s scalp. With a little antibiotic ointment and a long lecture to be more careful in the future, Lou was released.

After a stop at home to wash the blood out of her hair, Lou insisted I make good on my promise to take her out for a Valentine’s Day dinner at Kings Fish House at Bella Terra. I had had to cancel our early reservations, but when we arrived at 9 p.m., there was plenty of seating available.

Lou had one of her favorite foods, Maine lobster, as a sort of consolation. I had a fish I had never heard of, cobia, also known as lemon fish. It was excellent, and Lou assures me it is not listed as one of the threatened fish species we should avoid. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a well-respected Seafood Watch Program to which Lou and I frequently turn for advice when selecting fish.

Back at home, Lou was feeling better but was totally exhausted. She went straight to bed. I came in a minute later, tucked her in and kissed her on the forehead, much as I would one of my granddaughters. Then I stepped outside for a walk.

I walked around the block a couple of times, then sat down on a neighbor’s low concrete wall at the end of my street. The stars were bright in the sky. I thought I spotted Mars and told myself to show it to Lou the next night. I thought about how lucky it was that Lou had not been hurt more seriously than she was — three staples in a scalp wound, a cut finger, scraped palm and bruises on each hip, one the size of a silver dollar and the other like a glowing reddish-purple softball.

The concrete beneath me was cold and very, very hard. I imagined a pile of it on the beach at Crystal Cove. I sat there and wept.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at vicleipzig@aol.com.