Travel always has its ups and downs but I don’t think I’ve ever experienced both at the same time as intensely as right now.
I’m at Moonstone Beach in Cambria, just south of San Simeon, in a rented camper van. After a walk on the beach I hop in, reverse, clip a rock, blow a tire, and come to rest alongside the guard rail facing the ocean.
I call roadside assistance; they can deliver a tire but not until tomorrow morning.
I may be about to win the road trip breakdown lottery. I’m snuggled in my two-sleeping-bag nest on the air mattress in the back of the van, on a bluff about 25 feet above the beach, with the van’s big side door open, watching and hearing the tide roll in.
The worst and best parts of my trip are happening at the same time. I screwed up, am stuck, cannot go anywhere. But of all the places I could have been stuck on this trip, I’m stuck in the place I most want to be.
The sign says the gate closes at 6, but nobody has shown up by 7 when everyone else is gone. I can’t reach the authorities. This would be the campsite of my dreams if I’m allowed to stay.
The suspense is killing me.
Eventually a cop shows up, agrees that I can’t go anywhere, and gives me permission to stay for the night. I win the lottery! Nobody ever gets to stay here overnight. But here I am.
We’re all stuck in many ways for many reasons. A road trip during the final week before the election seemed like a way to silence the demons. Roaming around the state didn’t really help. But this night on the bluff over Moonstone Beach most certainly will.
In the light of the full moon, the crests of the waves are sometimes curls of silver, sometimes wraiths of foam that drift slowly south, continually morphing.
I don’t know how we’re all going to get through this winter. I don’t know what comes next. I don’t even have a plan for tomorrow. But I am so grateful to be here now.
A beautiful error.
A reminder to be able to appreciate the moment, whatever else might be going on.
You are well and truly blessed tonight, Jon. I am so glad you are in such a special place and safe.
❤️
Where the Land meets the Sea,
Where the Sea meets the Land,
Where the shells roam free,
Where the rocks become sand;
Where breathing is saved
For the gaps between waves;
Where the Fluid and the Fixed
Are irrevocably mixed
In a rhythm without rhyme
In a rain that brings time.
/Yours truly.
This takes me back to watching Ghostbusters for the first time. “Call it fate, call it luck, call it karma. I believe everything happens for a reason.” ~ Peter Venkman
My best buddy from the “hippie days” is doing the same, more or less, after a late life career as private pilot. (Resident AU, now, FWIW.) A fond memory is parking our hippie bus on highway shoulder headed back from MT ham fest, dropping battery operated B&W on the hood, gathering up front, to watch moon landing.
Perhaps I should have documented as “friends” and comrades dropped away into that other realm. I under-interpreted the waking nightmare I experienced, about the golden road to Him, Prince of Confusion.
days of hatred and chaos, n’est-pas?
p.s. don’t google #DeliberativePolitics and #ParticipatoryDeliberation … you might find this nasty old grunt’s reminders that Trump, his cabal, and his cult of right-wing zealots are //each and every// the product of our cohort’s lives.
KyeHo, good fellow … KyeHo …
And here we are, 2.5 years later, at a hotel just a few miles up the road from that parking lot, overlooking the ocean… I am honored to be here you, the love of my life, because you wanted me to see the beauty of Moonstone Beach, (Shiny pebbles! Driftwood! Maybe otters?) and I get to see the place that restored your faith in humanity, and recalled you to your place in the world.