I sped west through the wine country of California, through the almond orchards and the fields of oil riggers that dip and rise like the cheap plastic drinking birds your father used to keep behind the bar. But all I could see in my mind’s eye was her.
Her delicate fingers caress sand in intricate musings. Her powerful hunger yearns to reclaim stone. She duplicates herself in otherworldly pools that live for brief, startling moments and then vanish into her totality. Each time I am at her shores, I consider walking into the surf and disappearing forever into her depths, giving myself entirely to her infinite embrace.
On Highway one, just south of Big Sur, I felt her touch. It flooded my flesh with a stinging shiver; her salt sweat lingered on my lips.
A hundred miles north, on the shores of Seal Rock in Monterey, I heard her song again in the twilight.
I sat at her feet and watched the sun dissolve like sugar onto her skin. I saw the fire extinguish in an orange, stormy glow that called the fog from its slumber. I listened to seals and sea lions howl and honk upon the knuckles of her hands. I watched the pelicans and cormorants battle for her bounty in wheeling, chaotic patterns of flight. I played with seagulls as they picked at her secrets and sandpipers as they danced the no-touch walk upon the delicate hairs of her mantle.
The loss, the loneliness washed over me in waves of emotion as the night crashed onto my beach, retreating with their new treasures, leaving me cleansed. The wind, always the wind, rose to wrap me in the robes of the in-between. Nestled in the dark harbor of her shores, I felt healed and whole and hopeful.
I spent two days traveling Highway 1 from south of Monterrey to Leggett at the foot of Redwood country, following the course of the ocean and listening intently to what she had to say to me. At times, I perched atop looming cliffs and stared at her swelling below me, raging against the stone walls. At times, I wandered amongst her kiss and let her spray touch my reddened forehead and run lightly down my cheeks. At times, I stood in her cold embrace and felt the sand beneath me slip towards the horizon of her infinite hold.
She teaches me something new every visit, shows me a new side of her, a new facet of her being with every step danced along her shoreline. And with each lesson she teaches me, I teach myself something about my inner spirit.
The window is open tonight. Her whisper lulls me to sleep. I shall think of the incredible shoreline of the Pacific as it winds across Monterey while I dream. I shall drift atop the cliffs that drop off into staggering, rocky pools of tiny waves below my feet. I shall suck in the clouds as they alight on the tops of the doughy mountains. This is heaven on Earth, one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen in my life.
Route: West to North and then North all the way till morning