There's No Town Called Big Sur

He pulled the car over near a blue highway sign because this was the kind of drive where we would follow tourist arrows and random urges for a croissant. We we listening to "Missed the Boat" by Modest Mouse and I was thinking we had discovered the perfect setting for that track: late California afternoon, highway, sun sliding toward the ocean, road trip, no plans. I had never seen an elephant seal. They live in places that are called "rookeries", which I found adorable and funny, so we followed the sign to a parking lot and looked down over a chain link fence to see a couple of sea mammals. At first, I could barely pick them out against the sand, their already sun-brown bodies matted with the dirt they slap on their back to keep cool. Elephant seals can get sunburned. A young one, which Kevin said was probably an adolescent, moved and then I could see them all, like road bumps on the beach for miles. I watched my first seal dance himself across the sand, a frustrated, messy movement that resembled a series of bellyflops. Elephant seals only have the elephant trunk-like noses when they are in heat--and only the males get the magnificent phallic facial development--so I didn't see any of those, because this was the time mothers had just given birth. They snored in the lowering golden sun and did their exhausting bellyflop dating and sometimes climbed right over a sleeping comrade but somehow maintained an air of grace. In the only photo of me there (with no elephant seals in the background), I am pointing to the beach below, laughing.

I was riding cross-legged in the passenger seat, barefoot, absorbing the new Feist album, reluctant to admit how much "Sea Lion Woman" was growing on me. He drove, because he had seen this highway a few weeks ago, and I never had. It's not the kind of road where you can enjoy the view while you drive; the sharp curves lined on both sides by life-threatening rocky plummets and the inevitable California rental car--the Ford Mustang convertible, usually red or yellow--doing 70 in the oncoming lane.

The feeling that we had reached the end of the world, at this moment, on this evening, and together. We had been traveling for almost four years and we'd finally gotten to Route 1, the Pacific Coast Highway along the edge of California. It was September and we were driving on a cliff at the edge of the world and we didn't know where we'd sleep that night. The road wound like a snapped rubber band, perched on a steep red rock outcropping, a hill of rubble leading to the heat-glimmering sand and to the painfully bright ocean.

About an hour later, he found a little pullout shoulder of sand, surrounded by tall, waving silhouettes of sea grass, backed in and popped the hatchback. I slipped on my green flip-flops and pulled myself out of the car, surprised by the new chill in the air up here, above the ocean. He left the song playing and we climbed into the back, a spread sleeping bag beneath us and one to keep our bare knees warm while we watched the sun set right into the water.

to be continued...