Sleeping by the Pacific Ocean is incredibly peaceful, discomfort aside. Last night I was camping at Sweetwood in Half Moon as part of a group celebrating my friend Keith's birthday. I haven't been camping in awhile, AND forgot my air pad. Despite all that, I didn't have any problem getting to sleep or staying asleep -- and I'm pretty sure the primary reason is the white noise generated by the ocean. I think we definitely have an intrinsic like of that kind of random, naturalistic noise.

Of course, the other side was the animal. At 2:30am and again around 4:30am, everybody in camp was awoken by some kind of bizarre animal noise. It definitely sounded either like two animals fighting or one animal hunting another. It was a sort of high-pitched scream that was accompanied by a few other sounds and repeated a few times during each episode. The wierdest part was that although we had five or so dogs in camp, none of them went wild when this happened ("Hey, you big humans can go handle this one").