You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Pacific Memories.
For so many of us, getting in our car and driving anywhere is a futile exercise in frustration.
It’s stop and go traffic. It’s discourteous drivers. It’s illegal lane changes and old ladies flipping you the bird and exhaust and brake lights.
Dear God, set me free.
Today I find myself on the only road I want to drive. It’s a road I seek out. It’s a traffic snarl I welcome.
Hwy 1.
I’m in an open air convertible and the engine is purring.
It’s 78 degrees and the ocean breeze is massaging my senses.
It’s Labor Day weekend and seemingly every human on Earth is traveling this scenic vista.
Why not?
I am driving along a serpentine road forged into a seaside cliff over time. The topography has been cut by the off shore winds, carved by the occasional Pacific Deluge.
The road dips and rises and S turns as it hugs the cliff.
Below my right wheels is an 800 foot drop off into what I can only describe as Heaven on Earth.
It is a aqua blue masterpiece painted by God himself.
The Pacific Ocean is powerful and soothing stretching as far as the visual canvas will allow.
Mighty waves roll against smooth rocks and jagged rocks, and tired rocks and relentless rocks.
These coastal rocks are strong and lasting and they fight a constant battle against an onslaught of never-ending waves and wind.
These majestic forever rocks cling from the cliff, from the cliff, rise from the sea, bolster the edge of this beautiful and violent world.
These coastal rocks that hold up the land and fight against the sea have been here forever, a front porch view of creation.
These beautiful and powerful and angry waves and rocks were here when the comet landed and the dinosaurs evaporated.
But today, these rocks and this ocean are a vista of my life.
They are timeless and forever and remind me of a 1000 trips down a road that I hold in reverence.
As I watch the road in front of me, undulating, S curving, dipping and dancing along the side of the hill, I sneak a peek to the right.
There in a glimpse I see white caps dance on the undulating water like sea-nymph ballerinas in an aquatic recital.
Sea gulls hover on the horizon, flying on an invisible zephyr, hovering 800 feet in the air, breathless, scouring the churning endless sea for lunch.
Hwy 1 is magical, mystical, memory filled for me.
My buddy’s beach house is on the other side of Gerrapada Bridge.
I laugh as we approach. As high school kids we came here often, left to own devices, our own developmentally deficient minds. We were 17 years old, with hormones raging and angst flowing with access to an exclusive beach house where the front yard was the mighty Pacific.
The memories fill my mind like a rain gutter filling during a spring deluge.
I pass Rocky Point restaurant where the window sits just above the frolicking waves. We had our high school prom dinner here. A dozen pimply faced kids in big dresses and cheap tuxedos.
We looked at the ocean, it’s majestic and mighty onslaught, in the large windows. We didn’t care. We didn’t realize these waves started on the far side of the Earth and were concluding their only task, to bang against the rocks that held this wooden restaurant by the sea.
Past the light house and the restricted lands where only cows graze. Past the secret submarine base that is not so secret.
Then into Big Sur, and Pfiefer State Park, and redwood trees, so tall, so old, they are the gatekeepers of the Earth.
The rise from a shadowy domain, stretching hundreds of feet into the rich blue sky.
They inhale oxygen and wave at the omnipresent sun.
It has been this way since the beginning.
I drive past little stores and tourist turn outs.
I remember my days at the Gorge.
It is a secret watering hole in the middle of Shangri la.
It is a sun lit bastion of cool, icy mountain water, that trickles down from the hills, stopping for a moment to gather in a massive bathtub forged by smooth stone.
The Gorge is a magical swimming hole in the middle of Big Sur’ splendor, known to only a few intrepid hikers. The water is pure like a child’s smile, cool like a debutante’s non-chalance, enticing like an Ace on a black jack table.
Past the River Inn surrounded by 1000 year old red wood trees, the Big Sur river meandering behind the patio, babbling, calling, enticing.
The green grass dotted with lawn chairs, gradually slopes to the river. It’s here that children pull up their pant legs and wade in the brisk water looking for river rocks as smooth as concrete glass.
A few miles farther down the road, Nepenthe restaurant sits in the middle of Big Sur. So many cocktails, so many dreams weaved here while watching the Pacific percolate along a shore line of golden honey.
Nepenthe is a tree house of splendor. It hangs on a hill a 1000 feet above a frolicking Pacific Coast dotted by timeless rocks and forever ocean.
From the back deck, slathered in ethereal sunshine and soothing wind chimes, the ocean is a blanket of blue that merges with an interminable horizon that somewhere becomes the sky.
It is in this place, this fairy tree house made by man and Gods that I have often thought I caught a glimpse of the universe trying to reveal its complex message to me.
“your purpose in the fabric of life and time is ….”
I would listen and think, but then the wind chimes would eclipse the whisper of revelation.
But it’s there, in the distance, rising like a sea-gull on an invisible updraft.
In 1979, these places were known only to locals. The roads were free of clutter and tourist infestation.
While 4 decades is only a blink of the eye in the coastal geography. These rocks have barnacles older than four decades. 35 years brings a great deal of change to the migratory patterns of tourism.
I notice this change as I turn on to hwy 1 at Rio Road in Carmel.
I am about to open up this 8 cylinder monster and let it purr, downshifting in and out of S turns carved by man and inspiration.
But before I can find 2nd gear, I am behind a motor home and a pick up truck and a family from Nebraska.
They are driving 18 mph, riding the brake.
This is sacrilegious.
I feel a hollowness in my heart. It’s the same emptiness when a lover tells you are no longer the one.
Gas. Brake. Gas. Brake.
And so it goes.
Point Lobos is packed with cars and people over flowing onto the road.
California Highway Patrol officers are prevalent, trying to encourage the throng to keep moving; but to where?
As we wind through the Carmel Highlands, I feel the warm sun on my face. The air is cool, blowing off the Pacific.
I want to be doing mph, but I will have to settle for 20.
I think about the high school party’s down the steep driveways that sit on the edge of the Earth. I think about the prom date I was late to pick up because I was so enjoying the drive, I completely drove past her house.
I have driven this race track of superfluous turns and beauty like Mario Andretti. I have roared into a deep turn, down shifted, accelerated and punched it hard, feeling the G forces of a finely tuned automobile struggling to maintain a grip on the black top.
Today is not that day.
As I get to the Bixby bridge, an engineering marvel that connected the coastal communities of this Rembrandt by the sea, I notice something I don’t think I have ever seen.
tourists 3 and 4 deep. Simply standing on the ledge of the cliff. They are taking pictures of the rolling coastline beyond.
The people behind them are taking pictures of the coastline and the people in front of them.
And the row behind them appears to be taking pictures of the coastline and people in front of them and people in front of them.
“I’ve never seen it this crowded,” I say to my son.
I don’t care.
Time by Pink Floyd is blaring over the car’s speakers.
The wind is in my hair and the sun filling my eyes with a golden aura.
Time by Pink Floyd makes me think about the timelessness of this drive, of this road, of this garden spot on Earth.
I am 30 years older, driving a vehicle with many more horsepower than in my youth.
Over the wind and the orchestral complexity of Pink Floyd, I listen to the rocks whisper and try and tell me once again what my purpose is.
I hear it, but then, as always, the whisper fades.
I smile. That’s Ok. I know if I keep driving, I will eventually find the meaning at the end of a perfect S turn, held together by a timeless rock and an ocean that is both beautiful and violent.
Life’s Crazy™